Simon de Pury (right) and Ryan have a moment … will love ensue? (via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

THE CHALLENGE: This week on Work of Art, it’s the Garbage Project!

Our artists have to make a sculpture … out of toss-offs. Wait, hasn’t this been done before? The same has been done on Project Runway and not to mention by sculptor John Chamberlain and countless others, but thankfully not Top Chef.

From the moment Simon de Pury opened a garage door onto an enormous warehouse space stuffed with discarded appliances, I thought I could hear a massive groan from the collective art world. It’s a total cliché. And even worse, a cliché that the Whitney Biennale did first! #ohshit! Our contestants work with found object multimedia artist Jon Kessler, who opines that there is “something romantic about a found object” and advises everyone to “not get electrocuted.” Trong is totally good with this; being a robot he cannot get electrocuted.

The contestants await the verdict. (via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

THE CREATIVE PROCESS: studio time commences. Jaclyn is making an aquarium. Trong sez she’s maybe referring to “Jeff Koons, not sure.” Whoa, will our audience know that name now that it’s been said twice!? Ryan starts helping Jaclyn with the aquarium but warns her not to “touch the caulk too much.” It doesn’t sound like that much of a come on. Mark is making a hot golden mess out of a TV, turning it into a religious Mexican death altarpiece. TV = the new religion, got it?

Erik is a bro and “likes everything, dude.” Miles is looking best (again) with both his charming good looks (as the Twitter crowd noticed) and his work, which was inspired by his decision to go to sleep in the appliance warehouse. He makes a representation of an artist’s sleep, screening printing a microchip pattern on sacking and casting assholes out of concrete … something about stress and tension. We hear that Erik had a motorcycle accident and his problems with the right side of his brain, leading to lost trains of thought.

Trong’s ill-fated work “What Would Tom Friedman Do?” (via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

THE GALLERY SHOWING: Mark has actually come out okay! I kind of dig his sloppy golden idol. Miles decides to sleep on top of his work, making it come alive in a way that Erik deems “crying for attention.” Yeah but isn’t all performance crying for attention? In an interesting piece, Peregrine made two static-y TVs facing eachother into a “widow having a conversation with herself.” Trong, however, seems to have put his conceptual foot in his conceptual mouth. His blank white TVs having a conversation with eachother seems a little dry but not that bad, that is, until the judges come knockin’. The Saltzmaster barely censors himself, calling the piece “self-referentiality out the wing wong.” Miles fails to hold himself back and becomes judge-for-a-minute, saying Trong’s stuff is “distractingly boring.” He’s easily distracted though, remember.

Saltz calls out Jaime Lynn as being merely a stage-setter and “not making art.” Judith overexplains her Kandinsky abstraction made of wire, but the judges go soft. Bill Powers steps up and sez that Judith didn’t know what her intention was behind the piece, but hey, we like listening to her talk and seeing the camera montage her blatherings.
Once again the judges dig Miles! They all like the performative aspect of him sleeping on his sculpture and Jerry sez he got to know a little more about the artist. Aww. Jon Kessler does, however, note that “two anuses is overkill,” which we all know is totally true. One is plenty. Too bad the show has more.

Miles’ “Worst Place” (via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

THE SCORECARD: Miles wins! For the second time! Which is interesting in part because he’s far and away one of the better contestants on the show, but he better not win three in a row. That would just be weird. Plus did anyone else notice that he repeated a lot of materials and techniques from last time? The plastic sheet, the screenprinting, the wood. It’s a very singular aesthetic, but then contemporary art doesn’t necessarily look for variety. Oh well. Too many artists used TVs, that was dumb. Trong ends up losing, which I think is unfair given the presence of exceedingly worse crappy sculptures. His TVs were boring, not bad, and he certainly could have done better. Looking forward to the next installment, where more artists flirt with each other, Bill Powers is a creep and Jerry Saltz is guaranteed to say something colorful! [canned applause]

This episode was markedly less developed for me than the first. It was still entertaining, but had very little depth and made little effort to probe the artists’ works until the final (10 minute) judging. I’m not sure why, but it just didn’t come out this time. None of the work was great, not that it has been yet, and very little art struggles of interest have come up. Why not challenge everyone to resolve the struggle to represent three dimensions on a two dimensional canvas in a new way!? Seriously guys, great art is not made in these conditions.

Mark’s “Dia de los Televisiones” work (via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

ON TWITTER

Once again, SDP wins the show:
@abstanfield: Simon de Pury is great! He’s like an alien coming in to greet the invaders. Comic relief #workofart

On needing better guest stars:
@midairhighfive: Ok, Bravo. Third mention in two shows of Jeff Koons. Dude better make a guest appearance at the end of yr show. #workofart

Fetishizing the artist:
@manbartlett: there are some creepy miles lovers out there #workofart

Continuing the Art-O-Lympics!
@MAM_Chelsea: I hope next season there’ll be a Models of the Runway-esque spinoff of the art preparators who have to install the gallery show #workofart

On the futility of  “winning” an art game-show:
@artfagcity: @andrearosen in this show you can win. The work’s bad enough that that’s possible. #workofart

Oh … China Chow:
@kasten: Can’t argue. RT: @Glasstire: China Chow, bless her heart, has as much personality as a bucket of gesso. http://ow.ly/1ZCxe #workofart

@LazyLima: China Chow is a closet Black girl. Each time she’s on screen she’s got new hair! #workofart

Don’t do it!
@thejohnhogan: I was thinking of starting a blog about #workofart but then I realized suicide is never the answer.

And …
@MSLisaChang: 1st and last time watching #workofart— these people have parents who had hope for them at one point.

@clubsilence: Wait. People are watching tv when it’s actually broadcast? That still happens? #workofart #drones

Trong does his thing (Bravo)

11 pm, Wednesday, June 9th marked a watershed moment for the art world: the first time that contemporary art was inducted in the burgeoning canon of reality TV. Bravo’s new series, Work of Art, enters the channel’s line up of contest-based reality shows, home to such luminaries as Top Chef, Project Runway, and Shear Genius. Featuring legitimate art-worlders Jerry Saltz and Simon de Pury, the show aspires to find “the next great artist.” Will it succeed in picking an artist the art world will accept? Or will the show turn out to be more of a Dadaist farce, too nonsensical to have any relevance?

The first episode of Work of Art aired Wednesday June 9th at 11pm on Bravo. For a primer, I proudly recommend turning to our colleague Art Fag City for overviews of the candidates and excerpts from an interview with the judges. So how did it turn out? Well, why not just read on? See below for an episode recap and a twitter digest, culled from WNYC’s #workofart.

WORK OF ART, EPISODE 1

The episode begins in much the same way as any other Bravo reality show, with a montage of cutesy artist introductions! Our cast flash on the screen, brushing paint onto a plexiglas wall in front of a camera and gesturing with various implements of their art-making. After we get to see the faces of the artists, Abdi Farah explains that their first assignment upon coming to the show was to create a self-portrait, a major hint at the first challenge. The self-portraits are hung in a dull white cube gallery, set in random pairs.

Work of Art contestant Nao Bustamante

In the following scene we are treated to further snapshots of our artists though only a few personalities are thrown into focus. Nao Bustamante, relatively established performance artist, quickly takes on the role of resident bitch. Miles Mendenhall is a cute hipster with OCD. Amanda Williams is a dry professor. Jaclyn Santos is a BABE (yo, for real, her sexy artist-ness is played up throughout the episode). Erik Johnson is a self-taught naïf who paints angsty high school stuff. Judith Braun is a sassy lady. Trong Nguyen is indeed robotic. And mentor Simon de Pury shows up! Even more fastidious than Tim Gunn, de Pury’s voice and demeanor is so generically gentlemanly that he seems more suited to setting a neat table than critiquing art. Chill out, it’s just reality TV! “Art” is Work of Art host China Chow’s “passion,” she’s around for the decoration.

Chow and de Pury team up to announce the FIRST CHALLENGE to the gathered artists: create a portrait of the cast member that your self-portrait is matched up with in the gallery! Seems to have some potential. Artists have to “show the inner essence of subject”… in only 13 hours. After meeting them some few hours ago. The studio space turns out to be even worse than the gallery. No windows, but tons of art supplies are present along with a mysterious stripe mural off to one side.

Jaclyn is a proud pussy!

The artists have 30 minutes to get to know their subjects further, and we’re immediately set off on a series of snap judgements: Miles and Nao make a pretty good pair, both legit. Judith Braun thinks hottie Jaclyn is a “proud pussy.” We see Braun’s series of pussy-cats, including a cute kitten captioned ‘shy white pussy’ (don’t Google that). Jaclyn is offended. John Parot thinks Trong is a “cool-as-a-cucumber hipster.” Peregrine Honig “took Nicole Nadeau’s clothes off with her eyes” to create a naked portrait. Jamie Lynn Henderson sez, “I’m not just a ditzy Christian blonde, I’m an artist!” We know, dear, we know. Aren’t we all? She also likes “glitz.” Mark Velasquez is a fry cook (Bravo’s caption, not mine) who enjoys “shooting scantily clad models in weird costumes.”

SURPRISE! Patron saint of Work of Art Sarah Jessica Parker shows up. Miles (facetiously) asks who she is. We don’t even care. She doesn’t do anything. We briefly see Judith’s Proud Pussy painting on screen, in glaring pink. Doesn’t look half bad to me. Too bad we barely got to see it again. Miles starts in on a screenprinting of Nao as a riff on an old school “death portrait,” as Nao maps Miles’ movements around the studio on white paper, dots with connecting lines. John likes Trong’s use of snakeskin. Miles sez Nicole is intimidatingly good looking, “but so is Judith!” Totes agree. Simon de Pury somehow convinces Erik that he finished early with a crap painting of a clown-faced Mark. Unfortunate comparisons were made to John Wayne Gacy’s oeuvre.

Miles’ “death portrait” of Nao

Pre-judging, as always, the artists retreat to their fabulous dormitories. Apparently the William Beaver House is the “ultimate downtown address,” but what it looks like is someone swallowing enamel and vomiting Ikea shit all over the place. Weird.

THE JUDGING! But not before someone announces that the works of art “have to be done in five minutes.” Did anyone else find this time limit hilarious? The artists hang their works in the anonymous gallery in pairings with their portrait partners, and in pours a crowd of total randos (!?) plus the judges, the contestants trailing behind. Erik likes finally seeing his art in a gallery, we all go awww and our hearts melt.

Judge introductions! Saltz tells us that “art is a way of showing the outside world what your inside world is like.” He looks pugnacious. Rawr. “Gallerist” and judge Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn wants something that intrigues her. Judge #3 Bill Power wants something that… “gets him off.” Cause if the art doesn’t, he “can’t sell it in his gallery.” Oooof.

Everyone agrees Miles’ work is sweet with its added plastic veil. Nao doesn’t come off so well. The judges complain that they can’t see the link between the minimalist drawing and “portraiture.” Plus you can’t see the tiny photo-booth portrait of Miles hung next to the drawing if you approach the work from the side. Ouch. “Typically, people walk around in a gallery situation,” Nao retorts. I’m pretty sure that’s a valid defense. She then utters the already classic line, “I’m not responsible for your experience of my work.”

Abdis' portrait of Ryan

Jerry’s facial expression looks like Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui is giving him a wedgie out off-camera. Amanda’s abstract portrait “looks like falling leaves” and gets generally trashed. Abdi’s energetically bright portrait “has a vertical thrust to it” that Rohatyn clearly enjoys. Mm girl. She also notes that the “commercial aspect” of Mark’s photoshopped work “will be a positive.” Yeeeahh. It actually looks like something from Deviantart.

THE WINNER? Miles, Mark and Abdis top the podium for the three best, and Miles wins hands down. Everyone seems gracious. Remind me again how you “win” at art? Amanda, Erik and Nao are the three “losers” (Nao didn’t deserve that, but she did worry she was “too rude” to the judges) but only Amanda gets kicked off the show. Apparently her painting didn’t make the judges “feel anything,” and her “work of art didn’t work” for them. Reality TV loves wordplay. Artist William Powhida made the comment on Twitter that the first loser of the show was probably the winner in terms of credibility. In that case, congratulations Amanda!

SO!? At the end of the first episode, I’m thinking that Work of Art is going to be entertaining, and that’s about it as far as “Great Art” goes. Some of the artists created pretty interesting work, I quite like Miles’ portrait and I think it’s a legitimately good piece. But the real fun came in the running Twitter commentary art-worlders had on the show. Work of Art is kind of like a caricature of the art world — it’s fun to look at, instructive as a parody, and leads us to look at ourselves in a slightly different way. But the real question — WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Amanda's portait of... who?

ON TWITTER:

Quoting Miles on his portrait of Nao:
@cmonstah: #workoFart guy quote of the night: “The only way I was going to understand her was to make her dead.”

Nominating de Pury for further hosting duty:
@lindsaypollock: Simon de Pury is natural and appealing on TV-who knew?

On de Pury’s equipment:
@artfagcity: Why doesn’t Simon de Pury have a gavel he can use on the show to show approval? #workofart

One way to have fun (or die) while watching Work of Art:
@cmonstah: Everyone drink when people says “I am an artist” self-importantly. | RT @anxiaostudio Sounds like we may need a #workofart drinking game.

They made me feel something!
@Powhida: Jaclyn has nice tits. Sculpture? #workofart

Note the hashtags:
@tmccool: top chef and work of art should be merged into a 2 hour long special. #workofart #wokofart

Jen Dalton made a popular comment:
@jen_dalton: #workofart not helping artists’ image as ridiculous untalented self-important pompous clueless tricksters

Our own Hrag Vartanian echoes another theme:
@hragv: So true // OK the art SUCKS but the crit is pretty awesome. Jerry’s eyebrow raising is priceless #workofart /via @jen_dalton

On subbing Klaus for de Pury:
@joygarnett: He would LOVE. RT @ARTnewsmag: Klaus Biesenbach? RT brynarc Just saw #workofart and am trying to figure out who should play Tim Gunn role.

More EPIC substitutions:
@ARTnewsmag: @joygarnett @cmonstah also Richard Serra should be Simon Cowell & Tracey Emin should be Nina Garcia on #workofart

Judith Braun's Proud Pussy portrait of Jaclyn

Pictures of the other contestants’ portraits can be found on Bravo’s site here. All pictures courtesy of Bravotv.com

Illegal corporate posters for Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. (click to enlarge)

As a film, Exit Through the Gift Shop is funny, interesting, and quirky, but you don’t walk away feeling like you experienced a film as much as a really long DIY online video. Some parts are very compelling, and there are some real laughs, but the movie often drags, making you wish you could fast forward to the good parts.

As you probably already know, the film isn’t about Banksy at all, though in a roundabout way it is. The supposed documentary depicts the story of Thierry Guetta, better known as Mr. Brainwash to the street art set, who is a French-American eccentric in Los Angeles who seems to have enough money to travel the world on a whim — leaving two children at home with his wife — to pursue his passion of videotaping street artists doing what they do. The result is a film that does more to mystify Banksy’s legend than to illuminate anything or anyone, including Guetta. You leave the theater wondering if it is a documentary or something else.

For an artist like Banksy who has forged a career on manipulation, it’s hard to believe that his latest project isn’t some type of ruse. Sure, Guetta is a likeable character but he comes across as a fool. He stumbles through life until he figures out the ultimate capitalist trick of employing people whose creativity he can exploit. One day, after befriending Banksy and becoming his trusted friend, he is challenged by the veteran street artist to do it himself — so he does.

If someone were to concoct a character that is the opposite of Banksy, it would be Mr. Brainwash. Banksy is cool and secretive; Brainwash is clumsy and open. If Banksy’s art always has an idea buried deep inside, Brainwash’s has none. You can’t blame people for not buying into the film since the symmetry seems too good to be true.

An art work by Banksy that was on display in his Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition at the Bristol Museum in 2009 that attracted 308,719 visitors during its run and made it the 30th most popular museum show in the world.

Guetta’s first intention was to make a film about street art. His thousands of hours of video languished in boxes at his home for years until finally he tried to stitch them together into a film. The result was a 90-minute experimental film called Life Remote Control. The project is ridiculed by everyone, including Banksy. What Banky doesn’t realize is that this film within a film reveals something about himself that can be seen as his biggest flaw, namely his middlebrow aesthetic, even though deep down inside I think he wishes he were more lowbrow.

As cutting-edge as Banksy wants to be, he isn’t. His aesthetic hasn’t evolved past that of an art school student (though some may argue high school). Not that Guetta’s film is anywhere near a masterpiece, it may have certainly been bad, but the minute of footage we’re exposed to feels more daring than the film we’re actually watching. Banksy takes some risks but they are not aesthetic, they simply challenge some middle-class social mores.

Before his film’s Los Angeles premiere last Monday, Banksy painted a series of stencils on the walls of the Southern Californian city to generate buzz before the screening. One of those images depicts a security guard holding a balloon dog, like the ones made famous by artist Jeff Koons, and it is absurdly muzzled. Artist and Hyperallergic blogger Tim McCool spotted the esoteric reference immediately and offered a compelling interpretation:

There’s a Koons quote: “Abstraction and luxury are the guard dogs of the upper class.” So Banksy is accusing Koons’ work of being in the same category of unintelligible, abstract, and ludicrously expensive art.

Banksy’s recent LA stencil citing Koons (via Arrested Motion)

So, abstraction is the enemy to Banksy and he wants to label Koons as a pawn in other people’s aesthetics but Koons’ work is not really any more abstract than Banksy’s. I find it equally strange that Banksy, an artist whose works sell for big bucks, may be calling out another blue-chip artist, but then again Banksy often acts above it all even though he isn’t.

Throughout the film Banksy remains a shadowy figure (literally and figuratively) who obviously doesn’t stay secretive for legal reasons — his peers have found ways to navigate those waters without staying in the shadows (Shepard Fairey, Swoon …) — so it must be something else. Perhaps to elude scrutiny? The problem with anonymous critics of society, which are all too familiar on the Internet, is that they become tedious after awhile. Unlike Swoon, who seems to genuinely be interested in social and economic justice issues and integrates them into her work, Banksy is at ease in a capitalist system. He is the artist as corporation. He is the street artist version of Jeff Koons. I recently spoke to Australian writer and blogger Alison Young of Images to Live By who characterized Banksy rather well, “He is like a corporation, where there’s no transparency and on the one hand its sort of fun, but on the other hand people would like to know the workings of the organization.”

A shadowy Banksy as seen in the film.

I’ve discussed the issue of street art becoming the television to the contemporary gallery world’s cinema elsewhere, but what I didn’t mention is that street art has spawned its own obsessive fan culture that those outside the genre don’t see. These fanatics fawn over Banksy’s every one-liner like some people obsess over a Hollywood actor in US Weekly. Exit Through the Gift Shop is surely a pinnacle of that fan culture, but the problem is when you’re not a major fan, you leave only entertained. Which is fine for many people, and I admit that I was entertained, though I’d probably suggest you wait to watch it at home as there is nothing cinematic about the film.

The intended moral of the story seems to be that anyone can do street art, even a middle class dude in LA with a wife and kids, and you probably should if only to make a million dollars like Guetta, so why not, right? Then again, if anyone can do it then why should I care about Banksy or Mr. Brainwash or anyone else? By the end of the film Banksy changes his tune and jokes that he no longer believes anyone who can do it should. The implication is that unlike Mr. Brainwash, he does it well. Banksy is both critiquing and exploiting Guetta.

Banksy has more in common with Koons than he might realize. Both artists are masters of gaming the system and packaging themselves for the hype-hungry media. Some might take that as a compliment, others might not. To me it’s a bit of both.

Exit Through the Gift Shop opens in theaters in New York (Sunshine Theater, Lincoln Plaza), Los Angeles (Arclight in Hollywood, Landmark), San Francisco (Embarcadero), Berkley (Shattuck), San Rafael (Rafael), and Palo Alto (Aqu). For other cities, visit www.banksyfilm.com

A woman stands in a crowded square with her eyes closed.

Slowly we see her move forward, talking under her breath to an unseen participant. Her eyes remain closed. Occasionally she makes an abrupt course adjustment, narrowly avoiding one of the swath of unnamed individuals moving directly in her way. Passersby turn to watch the spectacle, the woman moving through the crowd and muttering to herself, denying sight of her eyes.

Jill Magid, still from Evidence Locker series (2004)

The woman is artist Jill Magid and the city is Liverpool. The situation described above is a performance from her 2004 Evidence Locker series, in which the artist developed a friendly relationship with the security staff monitoring all of Liverpool’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems and instructed the operators on the manner in which she was to be filmed moving throughout the city.

In this particular moment, Magid had called the officer whom she knew to be on duty at the time, closed her eyes, and instructed him to verbally guide her through the crowded square. She placed her ultimate trust in the hands of her omnipotent participant, actively engaging with top-down systems of surveillance.

Magid says of this work that she “seek[s] the potential softness and intimacy of the[se] technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view, the ways in which they hold memory (yet often cease to remember).” Her work thus creates playful interventions into information technologies designed as control mechanisms, dealing explicitly with subverting the traditional power structures of surveillance.

But as the tools of surveillance become more and more democratized there is a significant body of emerging work focused directly on the related idea of “sousveillance,” sometimes also termed the “participatory panopticon.”

Sousveillance (French for “undersight” as surveillance implies “oversight”) is a term attributed to Steve Mann (an individual whose work in “Wearable Computing” also garnered him the rather dubious title of “world’s first cyborg”). It refers to the ability of individuals in information age societies to set up civilian or private-run methods of surveillance — often decentralized networks and often with the potential for acting as witness for social or political injustices and spreading the information quickly at a global scale.

Josh On, They Rule (2004)

This isn’t your average Neighborhood Watch. Take TheyRule.net, an interactive artwork and sousveillance network created by Josh On in 2002. They Rule creates a platform for visualizing the connections between individuals in positions of power in some of the biggest corporations in the world. Depending on the map you select (10 richest people, Bush family and oil companies, media outlets and the companies they’re owned by or affiliated with, &c.) They Rule offers a visual display of major companies and the people who sit on their boards of directors. Most importantly the framework highlights which individuals have ties to multiple companies by placing representative icons between the associated firms and drawing a line through the individual, creating a literal link.

These were especially urgent issues to deal with in George W. Bush’s America. In 2002, for instance, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced its “Total Information Awareness” program, a tentative mass indexing of civilian information (credit, medical, shopping trends, &c.) for federal intelligence use. Even under the Patriot Act this wasn’t considered admissible: the program lost funding in 2003, but not before provoking a significant work of sousveillance art: the Open Government Information Awareness Project (OGIA), a platform created in 2003 by MIT Media Lab graduate student Ryan McKinley. OGIA allowed any individual on the internet to invert the process of information collection that DARPA had proposed by providing an editable database of personal information on corporate and public officials.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But They Rule and OGIA are not a type of artwork likely to be lauded with gallery distribution and acclaim, despite their status as important works with profound social and political consequence. The use of these examples, in which the artist creates a central tool for the public to add content to, is not to infer that sousveillance work is out of the reach of an individual artist’s voice. Just as one tweet could expose profound political strife or or one blogger can influence an entire nation’s economic process so too can an artist expose truths that are hidden in plain view.

Trevor Paglen, Large Hangars and Fuel Storage Tonopah Test Range, NV Distance ~ 18 miles 10:44 a.m. (date unknown)

LIFTING THE FOG

Trevor Paglen is probably the most prominent figure working today at the intersection of sousveillance and the arts. An artist with a research-based practice holding a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley, and until recently better known for his books Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World and Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, Paglen is something of an anomaly. His work though, whether termed experimental geography, research or documentary art, is incredibly provocative, especially when one hears him speak about the process he goes through in attempt to uncover classified information.

Paglen’s work deals explicitly with an attempt to visually represent the invisible: the classified and hidden infrastructure of the military-industrial complex, known commonly in military circles as the “Black World.” For instance, one of his projects is an ongoing series of photographs of secret military installations that are located in areas so remote that there is no vantage point where an individual without profound military clearance could spot them with an unaided eye. Paglen photographs these sites using lenses typically employed in astronomy, shooting from the closest legal vantage point and capturing anything from an abstract field of grey to details of planes unloading. In true performative/interventionist form he has also led groups of people on “expeditions” to various sites, taking them to the very edge of public space to learn about the social construction of hidden space.

Paglen’s work shares a common thread with many works of sousveillance: the art is not an exercise in overtly revealing classified or private information but instead a process of unveiling public information kept as a well-guarded secret.

He does this by reading between the lines in publicly available documents. His 2006 work Terminal Air, a database for tracking government flights (specifically CIA rendition flights), was created by cross-checking a list of aviation companies which hold permits to land on US military bases with public Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records. When further research into a company suggests that it is in fact a front for secret government transportation Paglen logs the public FAA records of all of that company’s aircraft movement into Terminal Air. Finally we are left with an easily accessible visualization of one portion of the world which is hidden in plain sight.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The more accessible and wide-reaching communications technologies become the more potential there is for citizens and artists to take active part in maintaining and reinforcing a participatory democracy. A positive move in this direction came when President Obama signed a memorandum on Transparency and Open Government the day after entering office, but its potential is still far from realized. Programs are still being introduced that read more as Red Scare than intelligent discourse: for instance the brand new Apple-lawsuit-bait iWatch campaign in Los Angeles, an essentially co-opted take on sousveillance in which citizens are instructed to submit leads on potential terrorist activity through a variety of platforms. The promotional video openly states its goal as a top-down surveillance system with citizens as sensors, stating “let law enforcement determine what’s a threat. Let the experts decide.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

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“Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window,
in this place] means anything.”
—A Course In Miracles, Lesson 1

“You suffer // But Why?”
—Napalm Death, “You Suffer”
________________________________

When a gaggle of Meriden teenagers got together in the early 80′s to form Napalm Death, they weren’t thinking of completely restructuring the DNA of the Song. They weren’t thinking about inventing a new Metal genre, Grindcore. They weren’t thinking about garnering the lifelong support of John Peel. They weren’t thinking about any of these things. They were just bored with the music they were hearing. They wanted to make something faster than Punk. They wanted to kill it, the latest tired beast. Turned out the beast was already out of breath, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need a good clubbing. Overkill never hurt anyone.

And nothing says overkill like zombies. Isle of the Dead, the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s film that played as part of Creative Time’s* PLOT09 on Governor’s Island this summer exploited the innately ham-fisted genre to hold up a mirror to an art world—already dead and gone—that required one last good carcass throttling. The main zombie in the film tromps through the well-worn paths of NEWYORKMUSEUMWORLD® and Chelsealand on her way to the zombie mecca of Governor’s Island. Accompanying her is Bryan Adams’ utterly perfect wistful-looking-back song, Summer of ’69. When this song is played in bars heads tip back, eyes close, a thousand false memories about the good times are generated. Even the cold hearted know about these things. Even zombies. In the film our hero zombie enters the same theatre in which the film is being shown to find it full of like-minded reanimates. In case you were wondering, this film is about you.

screengrab by Brent Burket

The zombies are singing “Summer of ’69″ in a style similar to the ghost echo choir the Stones deployed on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Mixing their living dead chorus with a mournful looping and rhythmic drone pulls the viewer into the emotional boneyard of the piece. It’s an avalanche of the sad and the bombastic. Laying out and lacerating familiar photos and film clips ranging from 1969 through the last Presidential election, the Bruces draw a line between then and now, and the hope we’ve been repeatedly sold. It’s not that we shouldn’t have hope, or that it doesn’t feel good. It’s that we shouldn’t so readily hand it over to icons, collective memory, or Larry Gagosian.

________________________________
“I rule my mind, which I alone must rule.”
—A Course In Miracles, Lesson 236

Siege of power, they made you a tool
While others were ruling you were being ruled
—Napalm Death, “Siege of Power”
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Larry Gagosian. Wow. Haven’t we seen him (been here) before? Haven’t we learned anything since the last big art market crash? Let’s ask Patrick Bateman . . .

“Bateman (in voiceover): But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing…”

Weren’t the aughts great, especially if you were an artist? Especially if you were a mid-career artist producing the strongest work of your career and limited to showing it in the occasional group show. Or maybe you were an artist with a brand new Masters-degree and you were trying to get your career off the ground while working as much overtime as possible at your full-time job to pay back your school loans AND pay your apartment and studio rent at the same time. Wait. What? You say the aughts sucked? Yeah, well. You’re probably right. Unless you were at the tippy top of the pyramid you’ve probably had a shit decade. Or if you happened to be looking at art, then you were probably more than a little disappointed at how conservative things became. You probably wanted more. I know I did.

* * *

It was hard not to think about money every time I walked out of Isle of the Dead. Not too far from the front of the theater you could see the tops of the buildings of the Financial District in the distance. The more money entered the picture the safer things became. By the end of the decade fewer chances were undertaken by artists, writers, collectors, galleries, and museums. We have just a few months until 2010, and the New Museum has given up their original creed and just decided that it’s easier to collect collectors than art. There’s a word for that: Over.

A couple weeks ago the Bruces did a Q&A after a screening of their film. In discussing their latest project, the Bruce High Quality Foundation University (also supported by Creative Time), somebody asked how they saw their school project in the context of other small endeavors that were created to support artists and became Institutions, capital I. One of the guys said that unfortunately, with success, these things often become “monsters . . . ” An audience member finished the sentence for him “. . . like the New Museum.” The Bruce’s response was coy, but the rest of the audience knowingly laughed. Ouch. But at least we’re talking about it in public now. That’s a start.

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The will to succeed
Overpowers the will to resist
—Napalm Death, “Mentally Murdered”

“Let not my world obscure the sight of Christ.”
—A Course In Miracles, Lesson 304
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The end of Isle of the Dead feels more like an ellipses than anything. It leaves things in our laps, sitting in a dark theater on Governor’s Island and waiting for the end. The credits bleed into the same images of the hallways that greeted us when we entered. We’re stuck in a loop of memory and grief. We have to mourn this carcass to make our way to the other side of the caesura. Like any good zombie battle, the only way out is through. The Bruces might be four guys, but through their film and the Q&A they acted as a single axe swinging at our collective parietal lobe.

When I walked out of the theatre, I thought to myself, “Why do art reviews have to be words? Why can’t we just post songs that reflect the work? Or a poem?” I thought of the equal amounts of eloquence contained in one of Jen Bekman’s pairings and a long Peter Schjeldahl New Yorker piece. Everything felt open. I could have swam home.

The Bruces are extending their hand at inspiration and questioning with the Bruce High Quality Foundation University. Classes are free with different levels of structure and self-direction, academia and action. They also don’t cost a thing. I sat in on the class “Occult Shenanigans in 20th/21st Century Art.” It was messy, covering topics ranging from traditional art history to Jack Chick tracts. There was drawing and smoking. There was confusion and there was next. It was good in all directions. If this was the future, I was sold but not bought. I was in.

Detail of Angela Dufresne's "Some Like It Hot," (2009)

I had a dream the night after I saw the Bruce High Quality Foundation give their Q&A on Governors Island. I walked up to a bed & breakfast. Knocked on the door. It was answered by a naked Jerry Saltz and his concubine. (At first this freaked me out in a there’s-a-problem-with-mom-and-dad kinda way, but I quickly got over it when I remembered that it’s just a dream. Everything is metaphor. The concubine is just a stand-in for Glenn Beck.) Saltz invited me inside, but the only catch was that I had to carry in my own mattress. It was an odd fit, getting it through the door. After I was settled into my room I went back out into the hallway. Off to my left, I saw naked dream Jerry hanging out with his naked dream whore, lit like a photo from The Art of Sensual Massage. Southern exposure. Straight ahead the door was open to a room less well lit. Looking in I saw the painter Angela Dufresne, fully clothed, focused, and painting away. It was time to say my prayers and wake up, “the morning already begun.”

Zombie Benediction: Mutilate. Multiply.

*Full disclosure time! I’ve sent Creative Time checks for 10 years. I also used to write their blog. Plus, I think the people who work there are smart and nice.

Cover of "This in Berlin Not New York" DVD

I joined Hyperallergic editor and fellow street art enthusiast, Hrag Vartanian, to discuss the recent film about the Antagonist Art Movement titled “This is Berlin Not New York.” This very indie film is directed by Ethan H. Minsker and follows the adventures of the New York-based art group as they travel to Berlin to participate in an exhibition and explore one of the world’s hot spots of contemporary art.

An edited transcript of our conversation is below but make up your own mind this Saturday night (Oct. 17) as the film is being screened at Anthology Film Archives.

Check out the the trailer on YouTube (01:25).

* * *

Hrag Vartanian: I have to admit that I watched the Antagonist Art Movement’s DVD twice and I was somewhat confused by its point…what do you think it was?

Elizabeth Spier: One of the group members explains at the end of the movie that they documented their time in Berlin “to express the poetry of what [they're] doing in a non-traditional way.” Well, if we are to take that literally I think most viewers will be pretty disappointed. While their organization may be non-traditional, there wasn’t very much about the movie that seemed very challenging or unconventional to me.

HV: But I was kind of surprised that it would be in a DVD format. I mean there’s nothing unconventional about that and to be honest I don’t even own a DVD player other than my computer. Did you find the characters engaging?

ES: A few of the artists bring up some good points — Ted Riederer in particular raised questions about the social usefulness of street art. For me, he was the person who made parts of the movie accessible to a wide audience. Who did you find compelling?

A still from "This is Berlin Not New York" from one of the many animated sequences.

HV: I found the people generally interesting, I can’t say one person stood out, but I don’t know if I liked their art much with the exception of the animation which I found wonderful. My favorite parts of the movie were the ones which integrated animation; that was engaging for me.

ES: Yes — that was the closest it got to “non-traditional.”

HV: My least favorite part was the generalizations about German or European and American culture. I thought those comments were trite and I think they knew that too but they included them anyway. I really wanted to like the film but I found it rife with hypocrisy. They had a disdain for corporatism but embraced one of its most distinctive features, branding. The Antagonists are branded up the wazoo, jackets, stickers, publications, etc. That seemed strange for such an “unconventional” group.

ES: Those sections did seem to undermine their attempts to connect to similar art movements in Berlin. Especially the part where one member stands on the street and tries to sell T-shirts! It seemed to drag on and on without any point at all.

HV: What was your favorite part?

A still from the film depicting an artistic intervention at an abandoned building in Berlin.

ES: Probably when they take over the abandoned building and fill it with their work. That section of the movie featured each artist and his/her work individually, so I finally got a sense of why these artists are producing work and what their creative processes look like. You also get a break from the dynamics of the group which got to be a bit annoying after a while.

HV: I agree. I preferred when each artist was allowed to sing individually. I also wished they identified some of the work they shot. I didn’t even know who made what. It seemed to be a disservice to the art.

ES: It’s unfortunate, too, that this is a movie about a movement but the individual artists came through the best. That aspect left me feeling a little unsettled by the end…I wanted so much more from the movie. What do you think about the title?

HV: I thought it was cute but I didn’t understand how Berlin was that much different. It was a tourism film that could have easily been shot in a part of Brooklyn or the Bronx where street artists aren’t hounded the way they are in lower Manhattan. Did you find Berlin so compelling as a result of seeing the film?

ES: No. I have no better understanding of Berlin now. I wish they had featured more engagement with the city and its artists.

HV: I really found that Berlin collective/squatters, “World Vacation,” interesting but the art didn’t seem all that interesting.

ES: That point is briefly mentioned at the end of the movie: Ted remarks that the work of the Antagonist Art Movement isn’t all that visually compelling, but rather that the mission of the movement and the process behind the work are what’s beautiful. This, for me, is the most striking problem with the movie: those ideas of mission and process are sorely lacking.

HV: Did you read their manifesto online?

ES: I did and I was surprised that they strongly deny being a political group in the movie. The manifesto certainly seems political to me. What do you think: are they political?

An endorsement that is used in the film's trailer.

HV: They aren’t commercial but they brand themselves. They want to battle the forces of “commercialists” but they act like some type of corporate entity. I thought they should’ve ditched the DVD idea and created a podcast or online video to be honest. They are definitely utopian but I didn’t quite get what they were striving for.

ES: It seems like they’re advocating creative expression from anyone and everyone, but in that case I’d expect more outreach to others outside of their small art community.

The art events they hold in New York, like one night exhibitions and writers’ nights, seem to do this more effectively than the movie. And the idea of a podcast or online video also squares better with this “mission.”

HV: That’s true. How can they argue that art should be everywhere and then only be an “art” group. In this regard the ideals of William Morris in the late 19th C. seem more on the mark. He engaged a whole class of Anglo-American society to create. And yes, their New York events are more in line with what they profess to represent.

* * *

This is Berlin, Not New York (March 2009) is being screened this Saturday, October 17 at 9:30pm at Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue at 2nd Street) as part of the Royal Flush Festival. You can also buy a copy on Amazon here.