Because You’re Worth It

VIDEO: Ali Jersey Art 21 from Jamtron on Vimeo.

Clever, irreverent, earnest…is this the best spoof of Art21 of all time?

art twenty-one and a half

‘Tis the season for spoofs it seems. This impressive video — aptly named Art:21.5 — comes from artist Scoop Brancisco in Hawaii. Appearing as a paper bag-head, alien, robot, and Frankenstein’s monster, Scoop explains a number of works such as the iPot which, well, you need to watch the video to find out more. Scoop’s also created an imaginative, do-it-yourself adaptation of our opening graphics: he draws a white line by dragging a paint brush through what looks like powdered ice tea mix. Be sure to watch to the end for what could very well possibly be our new theme song! Could this be the best Art:21 spoof ever? Stills below.

All the News We Hope to Print

Living in the afterglow or wake (depending on your political leanings) of the 2008 presidential election, we are left to wonder where this talk of hope and change might lead us as a nation. Yesterday morning, like many others in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, I was taken by the headline, “Iraq War Ends,” on what seemed to be a free New York Times. Upon further inspection it became apparent that it was a hoax. Dated Saturday, July 4, 2009, this newspaper changed its official motto to “All the News We Hope to Print,” and reported that the weather conditions included “strong leftward winds.” Opening my email, friends had also sent me a link to the website.

After a little bit of digging, I discovered this intervention was executed by the Yes Men, in collaboration with a film producer and three unnamed Times employees. The project took six months of planning and collaboration. On the morning of November 12, 1.2 million copies were distributed by volunteers in multiple cities across the country. The organizers issued a press release as well as newscast report.

Perhaps my favorite response was a blog post on the The New York Times’ City Room, specifically a comment from a former Times reporter, Alex S. Jones, who states that these newspapers will become a collector’s item. Copies are already on sale on eBay. For those of you who don’t want to spend $7-$50 for a copy, you can print out the PDF. As we await the inauguration of President-Elect Obama, perhaps the Yes Men remind us, in Obama’s own words, “we are the change we need.”

There Goes the Neighborhood

Artistic interventions in neighborhoods and community-inspired artworks are popping up all around us, from Pierre Huyghe’s playfully ritualistic Streamside Day (2003) to Mel Chin’s New Orleans recovery effort SAFEHOUSE (2008). It will be interesting to see how these kinds of  projects develop in the tough economic times ahead, and with the new energy and sense of civic duty encapsulated in this week’s U.S. presidential elections. The four videos below show how the act of re-imagining may be a crucial strategy in the years ahead.

Mattress Factory | The Making of Street with a View

RE-IMAGINING MAPS: Artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley organized the first-ever intervention in Google Street View by enlisting residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to decide how they wanted their neighborhood to be pictured online. Check out the results on Google Maps by searching for ‘Sampsonia Way Pittsburgh’ and more via Google Sightseeing.

L.A. Times | Watts House Project (WHP)

RE-IMAGINING DEVELOPMENT: A decade in the works, artist Edgar Arceneaux’s Watts House Project is located across the street from the landmark Watts Towers. A civic project modeled after artist Rick Lowe’s successful Project Row Houses in Houston, Arceneaux’s aim is to revitalize the surrounding area beginning by refurbishing 20 local properties. Read the full article.

Ill Doctrine | Kara Walker, Down in the Hole

RE-IMAGINING MEDIA: Fans of HBO’s groundbreaking television series The Wire will appreciate this one: after spotting the actor who plays Chris Partlow at the Whitney Museum’s recent survey of artist Kara Walker’s work, Jay Smooth created this video spoof set to the show’s opening theme song “Down in the Hole”  (lifting some artwork from the Art:21 episode). The Wire and Walker’s artwork share innumerable themes — from the blurry line between victim and victimizer, to the complex expressions of race, gender and sexuality — and one can only imagine what a sixth art-centric season set in fair inner-city Baltimore would be like. Or as Omar Little would say, “Indeed.”

Houston Chronicle | Art in the Lower 9th Ward

RE-IMAGINING SPECTACLE: Biennials are typically excuses for various degrees of civic pride —  from the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale to the continual redefinition of American-ess at the Whitney Biennial — in addition to performing the dual function of identifying trends and generating income out of tourism. What’s rather unique about the current  Prospect 1.New Orleans is the explicit association of a biennial-like event with a well-known tragedy: Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath. How this kind of spectacle will evolve, and what impact it will make on the community is still unclear. The video features new works by Art21 artists Mark Bradford and Janine Antoni, but be sure to wait for the contrasting moment at the end of the video, when an alternative project slips into view.

Saw:21

It’s October 31st — Halloween — in the year 2041.

In its twenty-first season, Art21 joins forces with the Saw horror film franchise.

Artists Richard Serra, Josiah McElheny, Do-Ho Suh, and Paul Pfeiffer must solve a series of puzzles or face an extremely violent death.

Watch the trailer (more info):

Art:21 Episode Uncovered!

As the curator of online videos, I’ve spent the last several months digging through Art21’s archival footage, searching for interesting behind-the-scenes moments to present as Art21 Exclusives. So, you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a series of eerily familiar videos on YouTube. Apparently, one of our industrious editors has been secretly releasing new videos online. I had completely forgotten we filmed these artists!

Compiled now, for the first time, is the lost episode of Art:21. But I fear there may be other lost videos out there. If you happen to find one on YouTube, please tag it with “art21″ or let us know via our YouTube channel. And as always, feel free to leave a comment below.

“My paintings are wars,” says self-taught artist Trevor Ryan Keys Altenburg, “they’re in space…fighting.” Taking futuristic conflicts as his subject matter, Altenburg’s densely-layered acrylic paintings act as parables of contemporary violence and the military-industrial complex. While his subject matter is serious, Altenburg is quick to assert that he’s “not concerned with anything,” stressing that humor is a way to engage with many of society’s problems today.

“Being an artist is something that’s so important to me,” says German-born sculptor Bjorna Gustavson. “When I look at color anywhere,” Gustavson asks herself, “what does color mean to me, to the world?” Categorizing all of her belongings by color into complex systems, Gustavson discerns the dormant workings of her mind while resisting being pigeon-holed by the color spectrum. “It hurts when people put me in the Purple Group. I hate it.”

“I’m quite into the aesthetic of looking like an aesthetic maker,” explains conceptual artist Kunst (aka Merrill Kazanjian). “Most of you won’t begin to understand me or my work,” Kunst asserts, in an effort to displace the knowing / not-knowing paradigm that has dominated art history since the advent of Modernism. Riding the energy waves that exist in the gap between space and time, Kunst’s work lulls the viewer into a dream-like state where anything is possible.

“I don’t think there is a perfect picture,” says photographer Tom Pullin, “the perfect picture is the one that acknowledges and recognizes its imperfection.” We follow Pullin on the steps of the New York Public Library as he photographs people he meets on the street. “I guess I’m fascinated by strangers because there’s no shared history between us,” explains Pullin, who takes his artwork as an opportunity to create moments that linger in the subject’s memory.