Nathaniel Mellor, "Giantbum" (2008)

I have to confess to a fear that strikes me whenever I go into a gallery of contemporary art and see the entrance to a video installation. Does anyone else get this? I get this sinking realization that if I walk down that darkening corridor towards the sound of that whirring projector or muffled dialogue, I’m going to have to be there for at least 20 seconds. I’ll have to crunch myself up against the wall. That might hurt. And what if I don’t like it? When is it ok to slowly walk back out of the room, as though lost in contemplation of the muzzily out-of-focus shots of deserted parking lots with subtitled dialogue? Is five seconds enough? I might smile knowingly to myself as though I have reached a level of understanding beyond most of the other visitors, while secretly thinking to myself that I’d far rather be watching the last 20 minutes of Liar Liar. Again.

I had this feeling a couple of times while visiting the new triennial of contemporary art at Tate Britain. The triennial has, over the years, showcased contemporary British art, but, perhaps in order to better illustrate the guiding thesis of its curator, Nicholas Bourriaud, this iteration takes in a range of artists working all over the world but within a fairly established artistic strategy, i.e. one well-versed in the writings of N. Bourriaud. The triennial’s title, Altermodern, needs a bit of explaining. Unfortunately, and despite the good intentions both of Bourriaud and the Tate publicity and interpretation department (the Tate really does have a department called “Interpretation and Education”; I think Stalin had one of those, too), explaining this intentionally open-ended term has proved something of a headache. The Tate website has a video interview with Bourriaud and a (slightly tongue-in-cheek, I hope) manifesto that aims to pinpoint the times in which we live with pithy phrases like “our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe.” Having taken the Tube to the gallery that day, I totally got that bit.

I think Bourriaud realizes he’s in deep water trying to define art being made now, as anyone would (no one confidently used the term ‘Renaissance’ until the nineteenth century, after all, and even now no one can quite agree when that got going), but for all the obfuscation and slippery language of the manifesto, the exhibition itself makes thoughtful and often compelling links across a range of artistic approaches. Credit is due to Bourriaud for allowing the art to take precedence over the curatorial conceit and not the other way around. Although when the conceit is this vague it’s hard to know what wouldn’t be considered “altermodern.” A hint at the broadness of Bourriaud’s brief is given in the inclusion of veteran art maverick Gustav Metzger, whose past as lighting designer for sixties bands like Cream and The Who is evident in his 2006 piece shown here: five liquid crystal color projections of an exceptionally trippy nature that brought me right back to the last time I watched a documentary on “the swinging Sixties.” Those were the days.

Video projections dominate Bourriaud’s exhibition, although happily the majority of them feel like real extensions of the language of video. Marcus Coates’s The Plover’s Wing, a 30-minute interview between the artist, dressed in an old-school Adidas tracksuit with a dead badger on his head and a dead rabbit poking out of his top (no, wait! Come back!), and an Israeli mayor concerned about the impact of the region’s violence on the young generation, is a strange, deadpan, hilarious and ultimately heartening work that has a warmth about it I don’t remember seeing in previous triennials. Honestly, it’s truly touching to watch the patient seriousness of the mayor and his translator as they observe Coates performing various animal sounds while acting as a mediator between the human and animal worlds. Lindsay Seers’s film Extramission 6 (Black Maria)—projected inside a wooden mock-up of Thomas Edison’s 1893 film production studio Black Maria—is a kind of patchwork documentary of Seers’s childhood. Suffering from memory loss as a young child, Seers retreated into an obsession with film that led her to using her mouth as a camera. It’s all filmed and staged in a way that steers clear of sentimentality while packing a significant emotional punch. Both films—connected, I suppose, by an interest in translation and the slippages it succumbs to—are both witty and unashamedly emotive. It’s also maybe the first time I’ve sat through an entire video installation without itching to leave. That’s that fear conquered.

Altermodern does sometimes slip into neutral. Simon Starling out-banals his own impressive record of drearily quixotic projects with a piece involving camera phones and Francis Bacon furniture that I’d rather not go into (the brevity of life suddenly being particularly apparent); Rachel Harrison, darling of the New Museum’s Unmonumental show, looks lazily hip and studiedly noncommittal with her stack of painted buckets wired up to a tiny video of some people in Florida smashing up a car. There’s a smattering of post-Matthew Barney D&D style mythologizing in the work of Charles Avery and Nathaniel Mellors, whose palatability is directly proportional to your resistance to whimsy and interest in made-up maps. Andrea Zittel’s influence continues to proliferate, as seen in the nudge-nudge utopianism of Olivia Plender, whose handmade costumes and knowingly obscure reference points can be a bit wearisome. And the seemingly omnipresent Subodh Gupta fills one of the central halls with a vast mushroom cloud of reflective kitchen utensils, a hangover from the brash days of the YBAs, like a big silver fart.

There are, though, many more hits than misses, especially Tacita Dean’s suite of photogravures entitled The Russian Ending, a reference to the doctored sad endings of Danish films released in Russia (they reserved the happy endings for the American market). The photos, culled from flea market postcards, show beached whales, collapsed bridges, and open-casket wakes, each etched with Dean’s storyboard-style notes (“zoom in,” “pan out,” and so on). As with Dean’s best work, it’s a contemplative experience that never sacrifices a kind of melancholy beauty to its conceptual rigor, and epitomizes the best bits of Altermodern: uncertain, searching, witty, serious and—this is the really radical bit—generous.

“Henry VIII,” Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3)

February may very well be the unofficial month of the photography contest.

Earlier this week, Joe Fusaro wrote about art contests in the classroom, and his thoughts hold true outside of the classroom, as well. Contests can be a chance not just for students, but for anyone “to get inspired by art.” With the Brooklyn Museum-initiated “Wikipedia Loves Art” contest and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “It’s Time We Met” contest, there is plenty to keep photographers busy this month and to be inspired by art.

Here’s a rundown of what’s going on:

“Shot With Index” (from Wikipedia Loves Art-Brooklyn Museum rules)

Wikipedia Loves Art (You, “The Object Photographer”)
The concept here is simple: submit photos through Flickr to help illustrate articles on Wikipedia. Coordinated by the Brooklyn Museum, and with participation from 14 other institutions, the Wikipedia Loves Art contest takes the form of a photo scavenger hunt. Prizes include memberships, admission passes, curator-led gallery tours, and even an iPod touch!

Yes, Wikipedia, the participating institutions, and the winning teams all benefit by the time the contest is over, but they aren’t the only ones. Participating photographers walk away from the experience with a different perspective on subject matter both new and familiar. The contest’s goal lists are largely theme based, so it is completely up to the participants to determine how to best illustrate these themes—it is an opportunity for participants to discover art and to interpret themes in a personal and creative way. In the end, though, the Wikipedia audience benefits the most. With new content added to thousands of general-knowledge articles across Wikipedia, the long-standing mission of expanding art awareness to larger audiences reaches a new level.

The event takes place throughout the month of February. Read more at Wikipedia, or register online at the Brooklyn Museum site. Open meetups are scheduled at the Met tonight, and at the Brooklyn Museum tomorrow.

“Rivers Burn Then Run Backwards,” Thomas Hawk via Flickr

“It’s Time We Met” (You, “The Marketing Photographer”)
While you’re running around the Met galleries (or the Cloisters) checking off items from the Wikipedia Loves Art goal list, why not switch gears and participate in the Met’s other photo contest, tied to a marketing campaign titled “It’s Time We Met” (another play on “met,” more amusing when it isn’t used by the Met). The goal of this contest is to find photography that depicts “how you, the visitor, have shared your Museum experience with friends and family.” The winning photograph will be used in the Met’s “It’s Time We Met” advertising campaign, and the Museum pays the winner what is essentially a one-time licensing fee of $250 and a one-year “Met Net” membership.

The contest is less an opportunity for learning about art and more an opportunity to connect with art. We all respond to art in different ways, and the focus here is placed on the visitor, not just the art; it is inspiration in the form capturing and sharing a reaction to art.

The event takes place from February 15 through March 7, 2009. Read more about the contest at the Met’s Flickr group page.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, "Phantom Truck" (2007). Photo credit: Barbar Sax/AFP/Getty Images.

A new weekly series of discussions and salons dedicated to collaborations of art and science began last month at the Chicago Cultural Center. ARS SCIENTIA puts artists in the same room with biologists, environmentalists, physicists, and similar kin, and includes snappy topics like The Chemistry of Cooking and The Magic of Perception.

This Monday, February 9, in a conversation titled “Structuring Change,” computational scientist Mark Hereld speaks with Season 4 artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, whose elegant, tech savvy works employ natural forms and systems to address politically sensitive issues ranging from immigration to cloning, gun violence, and climate change.

For further information and the full ARS SCIENTIA schedule, click here.

Not as incendiary as you thought, just the friendly folks from BOMB magazine here for the first round of our Friday column.

In case you didn’t know, BOMB—like Art21—is a non-profit organization based in New York City. We produce an arts and culture magazine that’s been around since 1981, featuring interviews of artists, writers, poets, architects, actors, playwrights…. We’ve just fired up our own blog type web product where you can come by to check out our podcast, weekly poetry and video art features, and a Friday column by the friendly folks here at Art21. We’ll be here every Friday as well.

BOMBlog will continue to expand the scope of our work even further.  We’d like to see it go far enough to include both Cunninghams (but that might be a little too far):

Merce

and Randall

For this week we pointed our eclectic eye at the Internets and found some stuff to keep you warm this weekend:

• If you’re around New York, the Ontological is getting Hysteric again with Richard Foreman’s new play…show…opera?…performance.
• Came across this art “magazine” that’s starting up on the web. Who knows where they’ll end up, but the words/website are cool.
• One of BOMB’s favorites, Antony Hegarty, was on Fresh Air this week; you can listen to him here.
• It’s probably not been Rahm’s favorite week ever, but here’s an essay he wrote about beating Republicans back in ’88.
• In other political news, there’s been some controversy about the insanely small amount of money that might go to the NEA from the stimulus package.
• A pretty neat collaboration of art blog/websites called 7 by 7.
• Thinking about a trip to Austin?  Better watch out for zombies…
• And this weekend, if you’re tired from Googling all week check out Doogle.

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EXCLUSIVE: In her Williamstown, MA studio, artist Laylah Ali discusses her system of organizing newspaper clippings, which includes photographs of swimmer Michael Phelps, soldiers, and American flags.

Laylah Ali creates gouache-on-paper paintings that take her many months to complete. Ali meticulously plots out in advance every aspect of her work, from subject matter to choice of color, achieving a high level of emotional tension in her paintings as a result of juxtaposing brightly colored scenes with dark, often violent subject matter.

Laylah Ali. "Untitled," 1999. Gouache on paper, 8 1/4 x 13 3/4 inches. Courtesy Miller Block Gallery, Boston

VIDEO: Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Tom Bergin. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork courtesy: Laylah Ali.

Andrea Zittel, "Single Strand Shapes: Forward Motion with 90˚ and 180˚ Rotations (Black and Ivory)," 2009. Crocheted black and ivory wool on plywood. Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery

single strand, forward motion, an exhibition of new works by Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel, will open at Andrea Rosen Gallery tomorrow, Friday, February 6.  This is the artist’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.

In a statement for the exhibition, Zittel writes:

I feel that my practice continually negotiates the fine line between emancipation and restriction, and in doing so reveals how creativity often stems from a reaction to a series of constraints. The works in this show attempt to bridge these concerns in both art and life and to show how problem solving and planning can result in a complex visual language…I have been recently drawn into a reinvestigation of logic based works such as Frank Stella’s black paintings (in which the logic of the making fully embodies the resulting shape), Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings (in terms of setting up a series of rules that can create a coherent visual structure), and incremental works such as Carl Andre’s floor pieces (which also embody an element of time and distance because one is required to ‘travel’ in order to view the entire work). All of these works have fundamental elements both formal and conceptual that have strongly influenced my own work.

single strand, forward motion will include a series of bronze hooks titled Energetic Accumulators: Digits that, in the exhibition space, become a temporary armature for some of Zittel’s own personal accumulations: a group of sewing scissors inherited from her grandmother, and a collection of tea bags. Although placed in sometimes random and/or temporary arrangements, the accumulated objects are organized into a regulated system by the supporting armatures.

Walking Patterns, a performance piece, begins with participants in a parallel line walking to the rhythm of a simple percussive soundtrack, the sound of hands clapping. Each performer begins to walk a pattern based on a simple crochet element; the process of “linking chains” is translated to walking steps. Performances of Walking Patterns will occur on February 6 from 6-8pm, and on Saturday, February 7 at noon and 3pm. These events are free and open to the public.

It is only a coincidence that the world’s largest franchised art fair and the international banking regulatory body share a moniker from their shared base, Basel, Switzerland, but no coincidence at all that each are currently in a bit of a funk. From Basel to Boston, institutions all over are now contemplating how to function in a financial black hole. Equally funky and oddly inspiring have been the community-based, democratically modeled responses to these crises-induced measures. One such example of this is an online petition to preserve the Rose Art Museum collection. No doubt this action is inspired by such tactics like the one that is lobbying the new Obama administration for a culture czar. How do we really feel about Quincy Jones at the helm of U.S. cultural institutions?

I’m more intrigued by artists’ responses to the increasingly challenging economic conditions—ones that are taking the form of community action groups. It seems that collaborations as community actions are the way forward for artists’ and art mavens’ take on large issues and institutions, even when the goal is individual empowerment. W.A.G.E. is one such feminist art group seeking economic parity for artists’ work.

Democracy in America: W.A.G.E. from Creative Time on Vimeo.

W.A.G.E. was formed well before the global credit crunch. In fact, it developed in the midst of a hyperbolic market where (generally male) artists such as Michael Landy, the Chapman Brothers, and Jeff Koons were parodying the same market forces that were feeding them. When the art world was awash in obscene amounts of cash, W.A.G.E. wondered why more artists weren’t seeing more of it. Granted, this is the complication of peculiar economic relationships in the art world based on buying, selling, and patronage, but not on the basic equation of labor and compensation. And thus the question remains: how do artists make a living from the practice of making art alone without wholly capitulating to market forces?

I have no answers at all to the big economic questions but personally, when things are a bit tight, I like to fall back on the old-school green motto that is both earth-friendly and cost-effective: the 3Rs. Below is an offering of some art projects that exemplify each in principle.

REDUCE
This collage is more of a collaboration between Art21 artist Andrea Zittel and MOMA curator Klaus Biesenbach featured in the latest W magazine. Biesenbach’s austere downtown digs inspired a collage, which adds some visual texture to his monk-like quarters. Granted, this is a design editorial for a luxury-goods magazine but it’s amazing how idealistically anti-consumerist it comes across.

Photographed by Dean Kaufman for "W" magazine.

REUSE
The largest of Phoebe Washburn‘s installations mimic landscapes and the most ambitious ones create their own biosphere.

Phoebe Washburn, "Manning Stay Station," 2005. Installation view.

Yes it’s cool that Washburn goes on walks, collecting discarded materials on her meanderings and then sorts them with her own cataloging system, but it’s even cooler that she retrieves the materials when the installations are dismantled and re-catalogs them for possible use in future projects. Granted, there are all sorts of formal and conceptual issues to tackle in this work and it’s really more about an obsessive practice, but it’s great to think about these practices as self-sustaining systems that form a tacit critique of consumption-based market systems.

RECYCLE
I think it may be high time to reinvigorate The Black Factory, William Pope.L’s peripatetic truck that solicits folks to bring objects they associate with black culture. The Factory’s workers then “convert” those objects into products to be sold.

William Pope.L’s “Black Factory,” 2006, via sokref1 on Flickr.

Perhaps these conversations on race would be interesting to revisit now that Obama is in office but, in a more compelling sense, I like that Pope.L’s art has often been based on the consumption habits of the working class and the poor. No one often thinks of the words “poor” and “consumer” at the same time, but those consumed things make for a material culture that has been fueling art projects for years.

* Lilly Ledbetter is the namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama’s first official piece of legislation. It expands workers’ rights to sue on the grounds of race, sex, age, and/or disability discrimination.

Laurie Anderson, "Duets on Ice," (1974) performed in Genoa, 1975. Documentary photograph. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Bob Bielecki.

This Saturday at the Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square, Laurie Anderson will be performing Burning Leaves, a retrospective of songs and stories that culls pieces from her acclaimed solo shows The Speed of Darkness, Happiness, The End of the Moon and Homeland.

The Season 1 artist’s new sound sculpture In the House. In the Fire. is also included in The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 currently at the Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition traces how Asian art, literature, and philosophy have influenced and assimilated into the work of vanguard American artists, a diverse selection that includes among them Jack Kerouac, Georgia O’Keeffe, Yoko Ono, James McNeill Whistler, Robert Irwin, and Ann Hamilton (Season 1).

Catherine Sullivan, "Baby Jane/Amusement Infusion," production still, 2002. Performer: Michael Garvey. From "Big Hunt," five channels shot on 16mm film transferred to video, projected from DVD, 21 min 48 sec per channel, black and white, silent. © Catherine Sullivan.

Contests. Art Shows. Expos. Special Exhibits. Art Festivals. It’s crazy.

While they are called by different names, art educators often have a similar reaction: Someone has a big idea and wants student art to decorate a space. The number of art contests we see in the average school year can make your head spin. There are contests to make posters about everything from teeth to tap water to trash recycling. There are contests for holidays and anniversaries. There are even contests for exhibits that the student artists themselves can’t attend. I’m serious!

But contests, if there is a clear set of criteria that judges are using to pick the artists, can offer students and teachers a chance try new ideas and tap into themes, media, and forms of expression that may not see the light of day in an existing curriculum. Distinguishing between contests that essentially exploit students vs. participating in meaningful and interesting opportunities with them is part our work. Classroom time is never enough for many kids and creating works of art outside of school that utilize meaningful exhibition opportunites can actually enhance curriculum and student portfolios.

Contemporary art gives students a basis and starting point for looking at themes, such as Protest and Consumption, that can influence extra-curricular work dramatically. Artists such as Jenny Holzer, Nancy Spero, Michael Ray Charles and Kerry James Marshall, for example, can give students new insights into work that’s about race, activism, propaganda and stereotypes. Exhibit opportunities and contests can be a chance for students to get inspired by art outside of the planned curriculum.

How do you use (or not use) these kinds of “opportunities” in your own classroom?

Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, 1932-33. North Wall at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

I must say I’m finding the vociferous opposition in Congress over the allocation of a mere $50 million dollars to the National Endowment for the Arts to help strengthen arts institutions (as part of the $800+ billion economic stimulus package!) pretty disheartening. Despite the relatively lavish attention given to arts policy by the Obama campaign and ambitious proposals put forth for support of artists and arts education, it very much remains to be seen how the recent changes in the political landscape might affect the way art is produced and presented in the United States.

As you probably know, Obama convened an extraordinary group of arts leaders to advise him in the early stages of his campaign. The platform was centered on “reinvesting in arts education,” with significant planks for supporting individual artists through providing affordable health care, ensuring tax fairness for artists, and promoting cultural exchange.

More detailed policy recommendations were presented to the Obama transition team by the Performing Arts Policy Group, crafted with input from visual arts and literature organizations in addition to representatives from the music, dance, and theatre communities. This must-read document includes recommendations for the expansion of the NEA, arts education, and cultural diplomacy initiatives as well as the creation of an “artists corps” and the appointment of a senior level official to coordinate arts and cultural policy.

Much of the debate since Obama’s election has centered on the question of whether the senior arts policy position should be a cabinet-level office that directs policy, or something akin to the Office of Science and Technology, which is more advisory. Quincy Jones is perhaps the most high-profile proponent of creating a cabinet-level “Secretary of the Arts”; prior to the election he claimed he’d “beg” Obama for it, though there is also a much quoted New York Times editorial by William Ferris, the former chairman of the National Institute of the Humanities, that forcefully made this plea.

Richard Serra (Season 1) was more ambivalent on the question of whether the position should be cabinet-level, but has added his voice to the call (literally in Studio 360’s “Voicemail for Barack” series).

There are also those that argue against a cabinet-level position: the Wall Street Journal, for one. And Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes argues against a cabinet-level position in favor of the Office of Science and Technology Policy model.

Of course, underlying so many of the questions at stake are the extreme challenges to artists, non-profit arts institutions, and arts education programs posed by the current recession. Green is eloquent on the subject: “At a time when the federal government is spending around $1 trillion to prop up the economy and to bail out failed businesses (with more dollars apparently on the way), it’s shameful that there is yet no federal effort to ensure that financially troubled but nationally important, programmatically successful cultural institutions (many of which are also economically important to their regions) receive economic assistance too.” Equally articulate is Michael Kaiser in his Washington Post editorial, “No Bailout for the Arts?” (Kaiser heads the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts).

Indeed, one of the major arguments for creating a senior arts policy position is to call national attention to the contributions of artists and arts institutions to our quality of life and the vibrancy of our economy. The “bailout bill” that just passed in the House of Representatives does include $50 million in recovery funds for the NEA, but the Senate version of the bill does not. I was particularly struck by the first comment on last week’s New York Times Arts Beat post about the bailout bill that asked “what is arts infrastructure?” forcefully underscoring the need for leadership and advocacy for the arts at the federal level.

As someone who deals with the challenges of funding for Art21 on a day to day basis, I can see very clearly the benefits to having strong national leadership on arts policy. But we’d like to hear from you. What changes would you like to see made? How might the appointment of a senior arts policy adviser affect your lives as artists, teachers, writers, art lovers, etc.?

Beth Allen is Director of Development for Art21.