http://www.vanderpoten.com/palmtreeforest/
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Sparizione dello spettacolo
MARIO PERNIOLA - Jean Baudrillard
Testo pubblicato in "Il Manifesto", 7 marzo 2007, col titolo "Potente e fatale la strategia di Jean Baudrillard"
A ripercorrere l'opera di Jean Baudrillard, all'indomani della sua morte, appare subito evidente come essa si divida in due periodi, il primo dei quali è segnato da un' insistita riflessione sulle categorie dello scambio simbolico, dell'iperrealismo e del simulacro, estendendosi fino ai primi anni Ottanta, mentre con il volume Le strategie fatali (1983) una nuova fase si apre, più paradossale e più suscettibile dei molti fraintendimenti in cui è talvolta incorsa. È dal saggio di Marcel Mauss sul dono nelle società primarie e dalle considerazioni di Georges Bataille sul potlàc - quella forma arcaica di scambio basata sull'obbligo di una restituzione più cospicua da parte di chi riceve il dono - che Baudrillard prende il suo concetto di scambio simbolico.
Oltre ai classici concetti marxisti di valore d'uso e di valore di scambio, il filosofo francese introduce un valore-segno, connesso con la società dei consumi e la universale semiotizzazione della vita, e infine un valore di scambio simbolico, inteso piuttosto come un non-valore perché, nel suo essere alternativo ai tre valori precedenti, implica la fine dell'economia. Già fuori dal marxismo, dunque, Baudrillard assegna alla propria teoria una dimensione utopica. Quanto alla nozione di iperrealismo, essa è nel suo pensiero una estensione all'ambito economico-sociale della parola nata in ambito artistico: come quel tipo di pittura forniva una copia del tutto realistica della realtà che intendeva rappresentare, così la società si trova a riprodurre con una rassomiglianza esasperata l'economia politica, quella economia che ha perduto, nella universale emancipazione del segno, ogni dimensione strutturale. La terza parola chiave, simulacro, porta con sé, nell'impiego che ne fa Baudrillard, l'eco di alcune considerazioni nietzscheane sul venir meno di una distinzione tra mondo vero e mondo apparente, e riprende anche il pensiero di Klossowski, di Foucault, di Deleuze e di Lyotard, applicandosi all'analisi dei fenomeni politici e sociali, in cui la realtà sembra dissolversi in una spirale infinita di segni e di rimandi, privi di referente. Derivano da qui le riflessioni sul terrorismo, che per un verso oppone un altro ordine a quello vigente, costituendo una specie di potlàc suicida, per un altro verso è un atto iperreale che spaccia per esistente una rivoluzione inattuata, e per un terzo verso partecipa del simulacro, che è estraneo all'ordine del senso e di una rappresentazione solidale con gli strumenti di comunicazione di massa, mentre dissolve qualsiasi prospettiva politica credibile.
Nella seconda fase, aperta dall'idea di strategia fatale, è centrale la parola «illusione», che va intesa sia in senso metafisico-cognitivo, ossia come il contrario della realtà e della verità, sia in senso estetico-psicologico, ossia come il contrario del disincanto e della delusione. Se si privilegia la prima accezione, il pensiero di Baudrillard acquista una coloritura scettico-nichilistica non lontana da alcune tendenze della filosofia italiana contemporanea - per esempio il «pensiero debole» di cui condivide il radicale rifiuto della metafisica e dell'etica, e quel filone della cultura filosofica caratterizzata dal catastrofismo vitalistico, che in Italia corre da Pirandello a Giorgio Colli e a Giorgio Agamben.
Ma sono paralleli, in realtà, ingannevoli: perché ciò che davvero interessa Baudrillard non è il problema della conoscenza, né l'enfasi vitalistica che pervade i filosofi italiani del sublime. Per lui, infatti, l'illusione non significa sogno, inganno, miraggio, e nemmeno utopia, bensì l'ingresso in una dimensione non usuale, non quotidiana, non statica. Ed è a partire da questo momento che ha inizio una rivalutazione di ciò che chiamiamo l'arte, il teatro, il linguaggio: perché lì si è conservato qualcosa di quella violenza al reale che si attua nella cerimonia iniziatica e nel rito. È in quell'ambito che si conserva una padronanza delle apparizioni e delle sparizioni, e in particolare la padronanza sacrificale dell'eclissi del reale. Siamo quindi molto lontani dal gioco inteso come ricreazione, loisir o distrazione; l'idea che Baudrillard ha dell'arte come illusione è semmai prossima alla concezione antropologica della magia, dove la potenza dell'illusione riesce a irrompere nel reale e in qualche modo a prenderne il posto, senza però identificarsi con esso. Un passaggio fondamentale, questo, per capire una tra le idee più oscure della riflessione di Baudrillard, quella di strategia fatale. Non è un progetto o un piano di azione elaborato da un individuo, la strategia così come la pensa Baudrillard, bensì una concatenazione di elementi esterni alla volontà soggettiva: dunque è un sinonimo di regola e di rituale. Ma questa concatenazione non è né necessaria, né casuale, né teleologica, né fortuita, è un rito senza mito, un significante senza significato, tuttavia può diventare fatale, aggettivo cui Baudrillard consegna il senso di legato al male, funesto.
Tutte le cose sono chiamate ad incontrarsi - secondo il filosofo francese - solo il caso fa sì che questo appuntamento non si realizzi; al contrario, dunque, di quanto è proprio all'idea di "hasard objectif" dei Surrealisti, che in un mondo retto dalla casualità cercavano di attribuirle un significato e un valore reconditi indipendente dalle intenzioni e dalle volontà soggettive, scoprendo una trama occulta: una specie di astuzia della ragione (List der Vernunft) hegeliana. Sebbene Baudrillard dia invece per scontato che le cose si incontrino, non attribuisce a questo incontro alcun significato, perché non di una concatenazione provvidenziale si tratta, ma di un rituale, che tuttavia talvolta manca l'appuntamento e si trasforma in rituale mancato. La distanza estetica su cui si reggeva il rituale è però annullata, in occidente, dalla cancellazione della scena e dall'annientamento delle mediazioni, di qualsiasi tipo esse siano (artistiche, politiche, sessuali). In questa direzione l'analisi di Baudrillard si distanzia da quella di Guy Debord: il mondo attuale, infatti, non sarebbe caratterizzato dal trionfo dello spettacolo, ma dalla sua sparizione. La scena è stata sostituita dall'osceno, il posto dell'illusione è stato preso da qualcosa che pretende di fornire un effetto realistico maggiore dell'esperienza della realtà (ed è perciò iperreale), ogni evento è anticipato e annullato dalla pubblicità e dai sondaggi.Dunque l'azione diventa impossibile e ad essa succede la comunicazione, che riesce appunto a fare precipitare ogni cosa nell'insignificante, nell'inessenziale, nel derisorio. Nel mondo della comunicazione, nulla più accade: tutto è senza conseguenze, perché senza premesse, suscettibile di essere interpretato in tutti i modi, tutti ugualmente irrilevanti e privi di effetti.
Testo pubblicato in "Il Manifesto", 7 marzo 2007, col titolo "Potente e fatale la strategia di Jean Baudrillard"
A ripercorrere l'opera di Jean Baudrillard, all'indomani della sua morte, appare subito evidente come essa si divida in due periodi, il primo dei quali è segnato da un' insistita riflessione sulle categorie dello scambio simbolico, dell'iperrealismo e del simulacro, estendendosi fino ai primi anni Ottanta, mentre con il volume Le strategie fatali (1983) una nuova fase si apre, più paradossale e più suscettibile dei molti fraintendimenti in cui è talvolta incorsa. È dal saggio di Marcel Mauss sul dono nelle società primarie e dalle considerazioni di Georges Bataille sul potlàc - quella forma arcaica di scambio basata sull'obbligo di una restituzione più cospicua da parte di chi riceve il dono - che Baudrillard prende il suo concetto di scambio simbolico.
Oltre ai classici concetti marxisti di valore d'uso e di valore di scambio, il filosofo francese introduce un valore-segno, connesso con la società dei consumi e la universale semiotizzazione della vita, e infine un valore di scambio simbolico, inteso piuttosto come un non-valore perché, nel suo essere alternativo ai tre valori precedenti, implica la fine dell'economia. Già fuori dal marxismo, dunque, Baudrillard assegna alla propria teoria una dimensione utopica. Quanto alla nozione di iperrealismo, essa è nel suo pensiero una estensione all'ambito economico-sociale della parola nata in ambito artistico: come quel tipo di pittura forniva una copia del tutto realistica della realtà che intendeva rappresentare, così la società si trova a riprodurre con una rassomiglianza esasperata l'economia politica, quella economia che ha perduto, nella universale emancipazione del segno, ogni dimensione strutturale. La terza parola chiave, simulacro, porta con sé, nell'impiego che ne fa Baudrillard, l'eco di alcune considerazioni nietzscheane sul venir meno di una distinzione tra mondo vero e mondo apparente, e riprende anche il pensiero di Klossowski, di Foucault, di Deleuze e di Lyotard, applicandosi all'analisi dei fenomeni politici e sociali, in cui la realtà sembra dissolversi in una spirale infinita di segni e di rimandi, privi di referente. Derivano da qui le riflessioni sul terrorismo, che per un verso oppone un altro ordine a quello vigente, costituendo una specie di potlàc suicida, per un altro verso è un atto iperreale che spaccia per esistente una rivoluzione inattuata, e per un terzo verso partecipa del simulacro, che è estraneo all'ordine del senso e di una rappresentazione solidale con gli strumenti di comunicazione di massa, mentre dissolve qualsiasi prospettiva politica credibile.
Nella seconda fase, aperta dall'idea di strategia fatale, è centrale la parola «illusione», che va intesa sia in senso metafisico-cognitivo, ossia come il contrario della realtà e della verità, sia in senso estetico-psicologico, ossia come il contrario del disincanto e della delusione. Se si privilegia la prima accezione, il pensiero di Baudrillard acquista una coloritura scettico-nichilistica non lontana da alcune tendenze della filosofia italiana contemporanea - per esempio il «pensiero debole» di cui condivide il radicale rifiuto della metafisica e dell'etica, e quel filone della cultura filosofica caratterizzata dal catastrofismo vitalistico, che in Italia corre da Pirandello a Giorgio Colli e a Giorgio Agamben.
Ma sono paralleli, in realtà, ingannevoli: perché ciò che davvero interessa Baudrillard non è il problema della conoscenza, né l'enfasi vitalistica che pervade i filosofi italiani del sublime. Per lui, infatti, l'illusione non significa sogno, inganno, miraggio, e nemmeno utopia, bensì l'ingresso in una dimensione non usuale, non quotidiana, non statica. Ed è a partire da questo momento che ha inizio una rivalutazione di ciò che chiamiamo l'arte, il teatro, il linguaggio: perché lì si è conservato qualcosa di quella violenza al reale che si attua nella cerimonia iniziatica e nel rito. È in quell'ambito che si conserva una padronanza delle apparizioni e delle sparizioni, e in particolare la padronanza sacrificale dell'eclissi del reale. Siamo quindi molto lontani dal gioco inteso come ricreazione, loisir o distrazione; l'idea che Baudrillard ha dell'arte come illusione è semmai prossima alla concezione antropologica della magia, dove la potenza dell'illusione riesce a irrompere nel reale e in qualche modo a prenderne il posto, senza però identificarsi con esso. Un passaggio fondamentale, questo, per capire una tra le idee più oscure della riflessione di Baudrillard, quella di strategia fatale. Non è un progetto o un piano di azione elaborato da un individuo, la strategia così come la pensa Baudrillard, bensì una concatenazione di elementi esterni alla volontà soggettiva: dunque è un sinonimo di regola e di rituale. Ma questa concatenazione non è né necessaria, né casuale, né teleologica, né fortuita, è un rito senza mito, un significante senza significato, tuttavia può diventare fatale, aggettivo cui Baudrillard consegna il senso di legato al male, funesto.
Tutte le cose sono chiamate ad incontrarsi - secondo il filosofo francese - solo il caso fa sì che questo appuntamento non si realizzi; al contrario, dunque, di quanto è proprio all'idea di "hasard objectif" dei Surrealisti, che in un mondo retto dalla casualità cercavano di attribuirle un significato e un valore reconditi indipendente dalle intenzioni e dalle volontà soggettive, scoprendo una trama occulta: una specie di astuzia della ragione (List der Vernunft) hegeliana. Sebbene Baudrillard dia invece per scontato che le cose si incontrino, non attribuisce a questo incontro alcun significato, perché non di una concatenazione provvidenziale si tratta, ma di un rituale, che tuttavia talvolta manca l'appuntamento e si trasforma in rituale mancato. La distanza estetica su cui si reggeva il rituale è però annullata, in occidente, dalla cancellazione della scena e dall'annientamento delle mediazioni, di qualsiasi tipo esse siano (artistiche, politiche, sessuali). In questa direzione l'analisi di Baudrillard si distanzia da quella di Guy Debord: il mondo attuale, infatti, non sarebbe caratterizzato dal trionfo dello spettacolo, ma dalla sua sparizione. La scena è stata sostituita dall'osceno, il posto dell'illusione è stato preso da qualcosa che pretende di fornire un effetto realistico maggiore dell'esperienza della realtà (ed è perciò iperreale), ogni evento è anticipato e annullato dalla pubblicità e dai sondaggi.Dunque l'azione diventa impossibile e ad essa succede la comunicazione, che riesce appunto a fare precipitare ogni cosa nell'insignificante, nell'inessenziale, nel derisorio. Nel mondo della comunicazione, nulla più accade: tutto è senza conseguenze, perché senza premesse, suscettibile di essere interpretato in tutti i modi, tutti ugualmente irrilevanti e privi di effetti.
La Luna
Fabio Mauri, entro uno spazio chiuso cui si accedeva da un boccaporto ovoidale, a mo' di astronave, cosparse il fondo di perlinato di polistirolo, tra cui i piedi dei visitatori affondavano, a immagine del suolo lunare, dove ci si poteva anche sedere o distendersi, con il polistirolo che si attaccava ai vestiti. Il titolo era 'Luna', l'allunaggio avvenne poco dopo". Così Maurizio Calvesi descrive l'installazione nell'introduzione al catalogo della mostra 'Roma anni '60', all'interno della quale l'installazione è stata nuovamente presentata. Il ciclo di azioni e installazioni 'Teatro delle Mostre' si tenne a Roma presso la Galleria La Tartaruga dal 6 al 31 maggio del 1968, e fu presentato dallo stesso Calvesi, il quale per l'occasione scriveva, sempre a proposito di 'Luna': (...) una dimensione più che inconscia, quasi onirica, con denominatore sociale, aveva anche l'operazione di Fabio Mauri... la luce entrando da due aperture, e specchiandosi nel bianco, forniva gli estremi di una nozione abituale, il chiaro di luna; invece il polistirolo, su cui si doveva camminare, con la sua consistenza imprevedibile, agiva fisicamente, come sorpresa, e nella sorpresa consentiva di verificare la nozione puramente mentale e ipotetica della polvere lunare". Gli artisti erano stati invitati da Plinio de Martiis, direttore della galleria, ad esporre ciascuno per un giorno solo, in modo da dover affrontare di continuo montaggi e smontaggi di allestimenti ambientali talvolta particolarmente complessi. Caratteristica del 'Teatro delle Mostre', per la quale il ciclo si contraddistingueva da fenomeni apparentemente analoghi come lo happening, la performance o l'arte-spettacolo, è stato l'aver introdotto per primi il teatro interpretato dagli artisti-attori all'interno di una galleria, allargando in tal modo l'esperienza estetica dei singoli alla società intera, rappresentata dai visitatori della rassegna. Ancora a proposito di 'Luna', una delle opere più note e pubblicate dell'artista, così scrive Tommaso Trini in 'Domus' nel 1968 "...è stato un invito a ridurre l'idea del cosmo... a un gioioso e in qualche modo magico modello sperimentale". M.C.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Christoph Schlingensief
Christoph Schlingensief
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christoph Schlingensief
Born Christoph Maria Schlingensief
24 October 1960(1960-10-24)
Oberhausen, Germany
Died 21 August 2010(2010-08-21) (aged 49)
Berlin, Germany
Occupation Director
Christoph Maria Schlingensief (24 October 1960, Oberhausen – 21 August 2010, Berlin[1]) was a German film and theatre director, actor, artist, and author. Initially working as an independent underground filmmaker, Schlingensief later began staging productions for renowned theatres and festivals, which often were accompanied by public controversies. In the final years before his death, he also worked for opera houses, and established himself as an artist.
Career
As a young man he organized art events in the cellar of his parents house, and local artists such as Helge Schneider or Theo Jörgensmann performed in his early short films.
Schlingensief considered himself a 'provocatively thoughtful' artist. He created numerous controversial and provocative theatre pieces as well as films, his former mentor being filmmaker and media artist Werner Nekes. Already his debut feature film, the surreal, absurd experimental Tunguska - Die Kisten sind da! ("Tunguska - The boxes have arrived!", 1984) was well-received by critics.
One of his main works is the so-called 'Germany Trilogy' (Deutschlandtrilogie), which deals with three turning points in 20th century German history: the first movie Hundert Jahre Adolf Hitler ("A Hundred Years of Adolf Hitler", 1989) covers the last hours of Adolf Hitler, the second Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker ("The German Chainsaw-Massacre", 1990), depicts the German reunification of 1990 and shows a group of East-Germans who cross the border to visit West-Germany and get slaughtered by a psychopathic West German family with chainsaws, and the third Terror 2000 (1992) focuses on xenophobic violence after the reunification process.
In 2004, at the invitation of Wolfgang and Katharina Wagner and to rave reviews, he staged Richard Wagner's Parsifal for the Bayreuth Festival. This production, in the first years conducted by Pierre Boulez, was revived in 2005 and 2006, but unlike other Bayreuth Festival stagings it was not filmed.
One of Schlingensief's central tactics was to call politicians' bluff in an attempt to reveal the inanities of their "responsible" discourse, a tactic he called "playing something through to its end". This strategy was most notable in his work Please Love Austria (alternately named Foreigners out! Schlingensiefs Container) at the time of the FPO and OVP coalition in Austria, a work which attracted international support, a media frenzy and countless debates about art practice.
Schlingensief also directed a version of Hamlet, subtitled, This is your Family, Nazi-line, which premiered in Switzerland, the so-called neutral territory equated with the Denmark of the opening line in Shakespeare's play where there is something foul afoot. Events around the piece questioned and attacked Switzerland's 'neutrality' in the face of growing racism and extreme right wing movements. It also involved former members of Neo Nazi groups, allowing them to play out their own weaknesses in the terms of the characters in the drama, and led to him founding a centre for former members to "de-brief".
Schlingensief's work covered a variety of media, including installation and the ubiquitous 'talk show' and has in many cases led to audience members leaving the theatre space with Schlingensief and his colleagues to take part in events such as Passion Impossible, Wake Up Call for Germany 1997 or Chance 2000, Vote for Yourself in which he formed his own party where anyone could become a candidate themselves in the run up to the federal election of 1998 in Germany. With his demands for people to "prove they exist" in an age of total TV coverage and "act, act, act" in the sense of becoming active not 'actors', his work could be considered a direct legacy of Bertolt Brecht, as it demands involvement as opposed to passivity and merely looking on as is the case in traditional text-based theatre. In an age of extreme media fatigue, his was a fresh voice albeit and undisputedly containing echoes of the past, often humorous and subversive yet never cynical. His influences included Joseph Beuys and his idea of social sculpture, and artists Allan Kaprow and Dieter Roth.
In his latest productions, such as the fluxus oratorio Church of Fear and the ready made opera Mea culpa, he staged his own cancer experience, and related it to his first 'stage experience' as a young altar boy. In this time he started his most ambitious project: building an opera house in the heart of the African savannah, in Burkina Faso. In 2010 he was appointed to design the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2011.
Death
Wikinews has related news: German director Christoph Schlingensief dies at age 49
Schlingensief died of lung cancer on August 21, 2010 in Berlin, Germany at age 49.[2] In a note to his death in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Literature Nobel Prize Laureate Elfriede Jelinek wrote: "Schlingensief was one of the greatest artists who ever lived. I always thought one like him can not die. It is as if life itself would be dead. He was not really a stage director (in spite of Bayreuth and Parsifal), he was everything: he was the artist as such. He has coined a new genre that has been removed from each classification. There will be nobody like him."[3]
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
David Lieske
A Greater Administration of Lower Interests
new york report
now i was supposed to go to the city that should determine my future career and life. my friends all agreed that new york was “the” city for me. i wasn’t so much leaving as being dispatched, equipped with euphoric prophecies about how my life would evolve from this important juncture.
a new attitude towards life, new insights, love, money, and success were all predicted for me. everyone regarded my working with the brand new upper east side gallerist as a stroke of genius. the flight was a breeze: direct connection berlin-new york, six half-seen movies, among them many of my favorites, like the nanny diaries, where scarlett johansson plays the nanny for the former director of gagosian gallery. this is exactly what i’d like to watch for hours and hours everyday. scarlett johansson tries over and over to explain to all of us the right life in the wrong, in the prettiest pictures, with the most beautiful people, in the brightest sunshine. i’d already heard about the perpetually clear weather and impressive light. ungodly conditions (like the weather) can be embellished in film just as easily as in words.
a good way to get to know my new home: the upper east side. i fast-forwarded through the wizard of oz, already looking forward to the new john waters book i was going to buy as soon as i got there.
i’d kind of forgotten that people treat new york like it’s the epicenter of both art-history and the contemporary art world, and a show there is something kind of special, as if you should send your parents a postcard to let them know that things are going ok, and that they don’t need to worry. this fact i either forgot or repressed. i totally managed to ignore it, despite people telling me things like “now things are about to get real,” because otherwise i would’ve been even more afraid before leaving. for this very reason, i hadn’t prepared for the show at all, instead packing up a few not especially connected things that i imagined i might be able to put on display.
the first thing on my social calendar was supposed to be a welcome bbq in the gallery where i could also invite my old music friends. even the germans that were passing through or in love came by. every time i responded, “i have no idea,” to the question of what i was showing, i saw panic stricken faces. some people warned me that night not to blow another opportunity, and actually no one found it especially clever that i had arrived with little to no preparation. this was just not done here, they informed me. in addition to all the transgressions you were supposed to have packed (people actually suggested this to me before leaving), the city was expecting real honest work … at the very minimum. at first i felt pretty good about it—that i was completely right, and that i’d done everything exactly as i should have. the gallerist had always been very relaxed when we discussed the show, and he never gave me the feeling that he expected too much from me. my first idea to show “alien” II and III in the gallery seemed to be fine with him. he even made it explicitly clear that he didn’t want a “conventional show,” even though i was always wondering what that could possibly be; i always thought that the art i wanted to make, or the work of the people we liked in common had nothing to do with that, so there was no chance that there would be any problem.
it was either that i hadn’t been listening or that i’d only half-listened on purpose so that i wouldn’t have to deal with it. anyways, the next day i was to report to the gallery.
i’d bought some decoy birds at the hunting store on friedrichstrasse the day before, and with great delight, i set them up for the gallerist on his desk. then slowly it became clear that maybe i’d expected too much from the flocked plastic magpies. unable to inspire rapture in him, they were quickly deposited behind the ikea paravan that cordoned off the gallery space, returned back to the cage that went with them. sort of irritated, i sat around at the desk and googled pictures of hairy men, sorting through the results while taking care that the reflection of the monitor in the office window wouldn’t give me away. killed time until lunch, panic gradually breaking out…
two weeks later:
my situation has completely changed. suddenly no trace of the non-productive attitude from the beginning—instead i found myself in the middle of a giant production process that i myself had initiated out of fear of not living up to expectations. african fabrics were bought in mass quantity. i had realized that i had really liked them in london, and i had heard that in new york you could get anything that money can buy. this was true. work in the gallery was simply organized and hierarchically controlled. the gallerist alex zachary oversaw and supervised in 163 addition to my helpless efforts, the ever-helpful gallery assistant mathew sova, who turned out to be a stroke of absolute good fortune. with his skill and intuition, he managed the whole enterprise. i asked him every five minutes what he thought was better. thank god he always had a quick answer at the ready. most likely it was for the best that he was, first of all, occupying the attention of the head boss of the gallery, and second, not in the least bit ambitious in any way. he neither saw the gallery assistant job as a springboard to artisthood (as is usually the case), nor did he really want to play a role in the periphery of the business. i fell immediately in love with him…
continuation
of course it was a little unusual that mathew and i were such close friends, also because i pretty much lived next to his desk, where day after day, for a pittance of a salary, he had to make decisions for me. one day he took me to his house—it was in a distant part of brooklyn they call “bed stuy.” “bed stuy is a world famous ghetto,” that’s what one of my other friends had told me. all the people i had recently gotten to know lived there, however, and i couldn’t imagine them in the ghetto at all. in fact, they were all actually young people with good backgrounds who had studied at harvard or columbia, and they somehow seemed to know something about every tiny remark that anyone anywhere had ever uttered. this bed stuy didn’t look anything like a ghetto, more like a district in london that i’d never been to but that looked familiar from pictures. the rents were supposed to be reasonable here and the area more or less safe. “afroamerican middle class,” a taxi driver called it on the way, as i was going there for the first time. i could never get rid of the weird feeling that i was some kind of intruder in this neighborhood, and i was always reminded of that animation from the film “princess mononoke” where that weird giant deer sets off a wave of blossoming and wilting every time he steps on green grass. i knew i was undoubtedly part of this gentrification avant-garde that had arrived to change the neighborhood forever, but people always told me that that was the city, and new york just worked like that.
actually i liked the upper east side better; i felt less guilty there. i really liked the gallery space. meanwhile, i’d had leftover silkscreens sent from london, and i had asked a japanese framer in the meaningful sounding neighborhood “prospect heights” to prepare frames wrapped in fabric, with the prints’ mat windows cut to the dimensions of art magazines.
two weeks later:
somehow suddenly the exhibition was almost finished. the last few days were extremely nerve-racking. the only thing holding me together was the speedy pseudo-ephedrine in the advil cold and sinus medicine that you can buy in any pharmacy here, the only requirement being that you show id—although there is a limit of two packages per day. it seemed to me that the best combination was with the drink “dark and stormy,” to which i had been introduced on a visit to rhode island with mathew and jenny borland. advil cold and sinus is also used to cook “meth,” but to do so we lacked both the talent and time. alex zachary had left for “europe,” and mathew and i had the whole gallery to ourselves. i invited all my new friends over to have spaghetti. michael sanchez, amy lien, jenny borland, and of course mathew, and even heji shin came, and the bolognese worked out, as always. the next day i made lasagna from the leftover sauce in bed stuy, where i was now staying every night, actually. mornings mathew and i would go to work at the gallery; the trip took at least an hour, and you had to change trains several times and then walk pretty far.
the opening:
dear michaela,
everything is finally over. i’m so happy that it’s finished. as is often the case when things are over, i’ve really exhausted myself quite a bit, and now everything hurts. the opening was nice. jutta was there and even found mild words otherwise i was just sort of out of it. it was just much too much, and i’d also allowed myself a little drink at noon and took the advil (cold and sinus). the dinner was exactly as i had imagined it. the greyish brown and beige porridge-like food looked really appealing, and even the warm mushy consistence was satisfying. it’s exactly this kind of russian / jewish / eastern stuff that i like.
i had a piano set up, and the boyfriend of ei arakawa, sergei, who always makes music at his openings, organized a japanese pianist, who played a few 12-tone compositions. he also brought a pile of photocopies of a new york times article about himself, and from the piano he passed them out among the guests like flyers. it was really good … then it got a bit boring later, and i didn’t like the vodka (it had weird flavors like whore reddish or bulk cherry). i don’t like things like that at all … so i just ordered gin and tonics. after that we went to a bar where they wouldn’t let me in because i forgot my passport at home. mathew couldn’t get in either—too 165 drunk. we ended up back in the gallery with three friends, where i finished the rest of the drinks from the opening around ten in the morning. the next day i felt really terrible. i changed my flight to october 20—not sure what i’m going to do here until then. i also have no money at all, unfortunately—not sure how that’s going to be. certainly a bit weird. yesterday i saw an exhibition of katharina wulff and also christopher müller, who was actually pretty friendly, until i insulted his room above the berlin gallery when i said it was so similar to where i lived now, except that my room was a little bit nicer … whatever. he wanted to come by today to have a look. i have to go to queens to meet with jutta. she’s doing a performance with triple x macarena that i want to see. that’s the band with john miller and the old composer that also shows with buchholz. tonight is the thing with danh vo at artist space, and i don’t want to go, but i have to because if i don’t eat there i won’t be able to afford anything for dinner. actually, i want to go back to bed, but then comes bortolozzi, and we’re supposed to go for lunch … i haven’t had breakfast, so i wait around, and then go back to bed. i was here at this museum (www.frick.org)—it was a little bit too nice, but there were also really great paintings. i never knew exactly just how bad turner’s paintings are … why do people like them?
one painting especially appealed to me; it depicts a woman doing handicraft in a kind of cloudy haze. in the background you can see her baby. the baby looks like it’s just died, and no one is really doing anything about it. it looks really peaceful, and i’ve never seen this kind of apathy in such an old painting, although one does sometimes see it in icon paintings when mary holds baby jesus in a way that one thinks that she totally has to be on valium and is crazy annoyed with the ridiculous job of being impregnated by the holy spirit (without being asked), and now she has to be the holiest woman in the world for the rest of her life and raise this hysterical brat that’s worshipped by the whole world and is always in trouble. i wish her the best of narcotics. i need some myself
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Enzo Comin
http://wwwsaby-4165indianidamerica.blogspot.com/2008/10/la-ruota-di-medicina-degli-indiani.html
Enzo Comin is an artist
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Sadrine Nicoletta e Luigi Iandoli
The Laboratory of Beyound Has Already Started.
Sandrine Nicoletta and Luigi Iandoli are two artists living and working in London
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Margherita Moscardini
ART AND DIALECTICS (1971)
Language is the first and last structure of madness.
Michel Foucault
Late modernist art criticism has for some time placed all its emphasis on art as an order of particular things, objects that exist by themselves removed from what surrounds them. Art as a distinct thing is not supposed to be affected by anything other than itself. Critical boundaries tend to isolate the art object into a metaphysical void, independent from external relationships such as land, labor and class. For instance, a painting may be said to have the quality of “openness”, when in fact it is only representing openness. One might as well tell a prisoner facing a life sentence that he is free. The freedom is metaphysical, or in art critical terms “esthetic”. A shrewd esthete can turn a prison into a palace with the aid of words- one has only to read a Jean Genet novel to see that.
Dialectical language offers no such esthetic meanings, nothing is isolated from the whole- the prison is still a prison in the physical world. No particular meaning can remain absolute or ideal for very long. Dialectics is not only the ideational formula of thesis- antithesis- synthesis forever sealed in the mind, but an on-going development. Natural forces, like human nature, never fit into our ideas, philosophies, religions, etc. In the Marxian sense of dialectics, all thought is subject to nature. Nature is not subject to our systems. The old notion of “man conquering nature” has in effect boomeranged. As it turns out the object or thing or word “man” could be swept away like an isolated sea shell on a beach, then the ocean would make itself known. Dialectics could be viewed as the relationship between the shell and the ocean. Art critics and artists have for a long time considered the shell without the context of the ocean.
Margherita Moscardini is an artist
www.margheritamoscardini.com
Language is the first and last structure of madness.
Michel Foucault
Late modernist art criticism has for some time placed all its emphasis on art as an order of particular things, objects that exist by themselves removed from what surrounds them. Art as a distinct thing is not supposed to be affected by anything other than itself. Critical boundaries tend to isolate the art object into a metaphysical void, independent from external relationships such as land, labor and class. For instance, a painting may be said to have the quality of “openness”, when in fact it is only representing openness. One might as well tell a prisoner facing a life sentence that he is free. The freedom is metaphysical, or in art critical terms “esthetic”. A shrewd esthete can turn a prison into a palace with the aid of words- one has only to read a Jean Genet novel to see that.
Dialectical language offers no such esthetic meanings, nothing is isolated from the whole- the prison is still a prison in the physical world. No particular meaning can remain absolute or ideal for very long. Dialectics is not only the ideational formula of thesis- antithesis- synthesis forever sealed in the mind, but an on-going development. Natural forces, like human nature, never fit into our ideas, philosophies, religions, etc. In the Marxian sense of dialectics, all thought is subject to nature. Nature is not subject to our systems. The old notion of “man conquering nature” has in effect boomeranged. As it turns out the object or thing or word “man” could be swept away like an isolated sea shell on a beach, then the ocean would make itself known. Dialectics could be viewed as the relationship between the shell and the ocean. Art critics and artists have for a long time considered the shell without the context of the ocean.
Margherita Moscardini is an artist
www.margheritamoscardini.com
My reply to Margherita
"Black Or White"
I Took My Baby
On A Saturday Bang
Boy Is That Girl With You
Yes We're One And The Same
Now I Believe In Miracles
And A Miracle
Has Happened Tonight
But, If
You're Thinkin'
About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
They Print My Message
In The Saturday Sun
I Had To Tell Them
I Ain't Second To None
And I Told About Equality
An It's True
Either You're Wrong
Or You're Right
But, If
You're Thinkin'
About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
I Am Tired Of This Devil
I Am Tired Of This Stuff
I Am Tired Of This Business
Sew When The
Going Gets Rough
I Ain't Scared Of
Your Brother
I Ain't Scared Of No Sheets
I Ain't Scare Of Nobody
Girl When The
Goin' Gets Mean
[L. T. B. Rap Performance]
Protection
For Gangs, Clubs
And Nations
Causing Grief In
Human Relations
It's A Turf War
On A Global Scale
I'd Rather Hear Both Sides
Of The Tale
See, It's Not About Races
Just Places
Faces
Where Your Blood
Comes From
Is Where Your Space Is
I've Seen The Bright
Get Duller
I'm Not Going To Spend
My Life Being A Color
[Michael]
Don't Tell Me You Agree With Me
When I Saw You Kicking Dirt In My Eye
But, If
You're Thinkin' About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White
I Said If
You're Thinkin' Of
Being My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White
I Said If
You're Thinkin' Of
Being My Brother
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
Ooh, Ooh
Yea, Yea, Yea Now
Ooh, Ooh
Yea, Yea, Yea Now
It's Black, It's White
It's Tough For You
To Get By
It's Black , It's White, Whoo
It's Black, It's White
It's Tough For You
To Get By
It's Black , It's White, Whoo
I Took My Baby
On A Saturday Bang
Boy Is That Girl With You
Yes We're One And The Same
Now I Believe In Miracles
And A Miracle
Has Happened Tonight
But, If
You're Thinkin'
About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
They Print My Message
In The Saturday Sun
I Had To Tell Them
I Ain't Second To None
And I Told About Equality
An It's True
Either You're Wrong
Or You're Right
But, If
You're Thinkin'
About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
I Am Tired Of This Devil
I Am Tired Of This Stuff
I Am Tired Of This Business
Sew When The
Going Gets Rough
I Ain't Scared Of
Your Brother
I Ain't Scared Of No Sheets
I Ain't Scare Of Nobody
Girl When The
Goin' Gets Mean
[L. T. B. Rap Performance]
Protection
For Gangs, Clubs
And Nations
Causing Grief In
Human Relations
It's A Turf War
On A Global Scale
I'd Rather Hear Both Sides
Of The Tale
See, It's Not About Races
Just Places
Faces
Where Your Blood
Comes From
Is Where Your Space Is
I've Seen The Bright
Get Duller
I'm Not Going To Spend
My Life Being A Color
[Michael]
Don't Tell Me You Agree With Me
When I Saw You Kicking Dirt In My Eye
But, If
You're Thinkin' About My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White
I Said If
You're Thinkin' Of
Being My Baby
It Don't Matter If You're Black Or White
I Said If
You're Thinkin' Of
Being My Brother
It Don't Matter If You're
Black Or White
Ooh, Ooh
Yea, Yea, Yea Now
Ooh, Ooh
Yea, Yea, Yea Now
It's Black, It's White
It's Tough For You
To Get By
It's Black , It's White, Whoo
It's Black, It's White
It's Tough For You
To Get By
It's Black , It's White, Whoo
Monday, April 4, 2011
Francesco Grassi
Sarebbe bello poter fare tutto senza dover tenere conto delle leggi della fisica, vorrei poter essere in grado di creare qualcosa senza avere il bagaglio nozionistico necessario per farlo.
L'artista, dovrebbe essere libero da ogni legge che implica razionalità e logica, dovrebbe avere la capacità di far fluttuare oggetti in aria.
Ogni riadattamento imposto dalle circostanze in cui ti trovi è da ritenersi una collaborazione, un dialogo diretto con ciò che forza il pensiero archetipico di un’opera.
Il raziocinio è un collaboratore e un limite, La gravità è una collaboratrice e un limite, il luogo in cui ti trovi è un collaboratore e un limite. Tutto ciò che creo, non è una mia creazione, è la creazione di ognuno di quegli elementi del mondo che è ha modificato il mio modo di pensare.
Francesco Grassi is an artist based between Vancouver and Frankfurt
L'artista, dovrebbe essere libero da ogni legge che implica razionalità e logica, dovrebbe avere la capacità di far fluttuare oggetti in aria.
Ogni riadattamento imposto dalle circostanze in cui ti trovi è da ritenersi una collaborazione, un dialogo diretto con ciò che forza il pensiero archetipico di un’opera.
Il raziocinio è un collaboratore e un limite, La gravità è una collaboratrice e un limite, il luogo in cui ti trovi è un collaboratore e un limite. Tutto ciò che creo, non è una mia creazione, è la creazione di ognuno di quegli elementi del mondo che è ha modificato il mio modo di pensare.
Francesco Grassi is an artist based between Vancouver and Frankfurt
Friday, April 1, 2011
Timothy Hull
Final resting places: grace to be born and live as variously as possible
Timothy Hull is an artist based in NY
My reply to Timothy
During 1820, Keats displayed increasingly serious symptoms of tuberculosis, to the extent that he suffered two lung haemorrhages in the first few days of February.[43][44] He lost large amounts of blood and was bled further by the attending physician. Hunt nursed him in London for much of the summer. At the suggestion of his doctors, he agreed to move to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. On 13 September, they left for Gravesend and four days later boarded the sailing brig The Maria Crowther. Keats wrote his final revisions of "Bright Star" aboard the ship. The journey was a minor catastrophe: storms broke out followed by a dead calm that slowed the ship’s progress. When it finally docked in Naples, the ship was held in quarantine for ten days because of a suspected outbreak of cholera in Britain. Keats reached Rome on November 14 by which time all hope of a warmer climate had evaporated.[45]
On arrival in Italy, he moved into a villa on the Spanish Steps in Rome, today the Keats-Shelley Memorial House museum. Despite care from Severn and Dr. James Clark, his health rapidly deteriorated. The medical attention Keats received may have hastened his death.[46] In November 1820, Clark declared that the source of his illness was "mental exertion" and that the source was largely situated in his stomach. Clark eventually diagnosed consumption (tuberculosis) and placed Keats on a starvation diet of an anchovy and a piece of bread a day intended to reduce the blood flow to his stomach. He also bled the poet; a standard treatment of the day, but likely a significant contributor to Keats's weakness.[47] Keats's friend Brown writes: "They could have used opium in small doses, and Keats had asked Severn to buy a bottle of opium when they were setting off on their voyage. What Severn didn't realise was that Keats saw it as a possible resource if he wanted to commit suicide. He tried to get the bottle from Severn on the voyage but Severn wouldn't let him have it. Then in Rome he tried again. [...] Severn was in such a quandary he didn't know what to do, so in the end he went to the doctor who took it away. As a result Keats went through dreadful agonies with nothing to ease the pain at all." [47] Keats was furious with both Severn and Clarke when they refused laudanum (opium). He repeatedly demanded "how long is this posthumous existence of mine to go on?". Severn writes, "Keats raves till I am in a complete tremble for him," [47] continuing, "about four, the approaches of death came on. [Keats said] 'Severn—I—lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy; don't be frightened—be firm, and thank God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seem'd boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sank into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept."[48]
Keats's grave in Rome
He died on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be placed under a unnamed tombstone which contained only the words (in pentameter), "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Severn and Brown erected the stone, which under a relief of a lyre with broken strings, contains the epitaph: This Grave / contains all that was Mortal / of a / Young English Poet / Who / on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart / at the Malicious Power of his Enemies / Desired / these Words to be / engraven on his Tomb Stone: / Here lies One / Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821"
There is a discrepancy of one day between the official date of death and the grave marking. Severn and Brown had added their lines to the stone in protest at the critical reception of Keats's work. Hunt blamed his death on the scathing attack of "Endymion" by the Quarterly Review. Seven weeks after the funeral, Shelley memorialised Keats in his poem Adonaïs.[49] Clark saw to the planting of daisies on the grave, saying that Keats would have wished it. For public health reasons, the Italian health authorities burned the furniture in Keats's room, scraped the walls, made new windows, doors and flooring.[50][51] The ashes of Shelley (d. 8 July 1822), one of Keats’s most fervent champions, are also buried there along with Severn (d. 3 August 1879) who nursed Keats to the end. Describing the vista of the site today, Marsh wrote, "In the old part of the graveyard, barely a field when Keats was buried here, there are now umbrella pines, myrtle shrubs, roses, and carpets of wild violets". [45]
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
My reply to Annalisa
Serge Lutens (born 14 March 1942, in Lille, France) is a French photographer, filmmaker, hair stylist, perfume art-director and fashion designer.
Serge Lutens is most well-known for his art direction and photography for Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido in the 1980s.
At fourteen, Serge Lutens was taken on as an apprentice by a hair salon in Lille, a period which he described as crucial to his appreciation of beauty in three dimensions.[1] Lutens started to experiment with makeup and photography, using friends to pose as models.
In 1962 Lutens moved to Paris, where Vogue magazine hired him to create makeup, hair and jewellery. Throughout the 1960s he collaborated with photographers such as Richard Avedon, Bob Richardson and Irving Penn. In 1967 Christian Dior commissioned Lutens to create a makeup line.
Lutens' 1973 series of photographs (inspired by the artists Claude Monet, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani) was shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In the mid-1970s he directed two short art films, "Les Stars" (1974) and "Suaire" (1976). Both were shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
Shiseido hired Lutens in 1980 to develop their product image. Throughout the 1980s he shot various advertising campaigns and films and designed makeup and packaging. These works won him two 'Lions d’Or' at the International Advertising Film Festival. In 1982, Shiseido commissioned Lutens to create a fragrance called "Nombre Noir".
In the early 1990s Lutens conceived and designed the "Les Salons du Palais Royal", a house of perfume.[2]
In 2000, Lutens launched his own brand "Parfums-Beaute Serge Lutens".
For four consecutive years, 2001 to 2004, Lutens was awarded the "Fifi Award" for best Original Concept. In 2004 he was selected to participate in "Lille 2004 - European Capital City", where he erected his "Olfactory Maze" an installation of concrete and light where he recreated scents from the city of his childhood such as rain, earth and leaves.
In 2006 the "Sommet du Luxe" awarded Lutens the "Talent d’Or", and in 2007 the French Government gave him the title of "Commandeur" in the Order of Arts and Letters.
Serge Lutens currently lives in Marrakech, Morocco.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Filipa Ramos
A REVOLUTION IS A UNIQUE ACT OF REVOLVING
IMAGES:
1
Douglas Huebler
THE LINE ABOVE IS ROTATING ON ITS AXIS AT A SPEED OF ONE REVOLUTION EACH DAY, 1970
2
Edgar Reitz
GESCHWINDIGKEIT, 13', 1963
In the film Geschwindigkeit (Speed) Edgar Reitz mounts his camera on a moving car and lets it swing on its own axis. In this way he obtains a series of vague, impressionistic pictures, which he joins together in an extremely complicated score.
--------
VIDEO:
SUN RA AND ARKESTRA IN THE PYRAMIDS AND IN ORGOSOLO, 1971
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5azChH6Z7QA
SRI K. PATTABHI JOIS INSTRUCTS INTERMEDIATE ASHTANGA YOGA SERIES, 1993
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZKWCFk9HJI
Filipa Ramos is art critic and indipendent curator
IMAGES:
1
Douglas Huebler
THE LINE ABOVE IS ROTATING ON ITS AXIS AT A SPEED OF ONE REVOLUTION EACH DAY, 1970
2
Edgar Reitz
GESCHWINDIGKEIT, 13', 1963
In the film Geschwindigkeit (Speed) Edgar Reitz mounts his camera on a moving car and lets it swing on its own axis. In this way he obtains a series of vague, impressionistic pictures, which he joins together in an extremely complicated score.
--------
VIDEO:
SUN RA AND ARKESTRA IN THE PYRAMIDS AND IN ORGOSOLO, 1971
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5azChH6Z7QA
SRI K. PATTABHI JOIS INSTRUCTS INTERMEDIATE ASHTANGA YOGA SERIES, 1993
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZKWCFk9HJI
Filipa Ramos is art critic and indipendent curator
Sunday, March 27, 2011
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