I’m going to start this essay with the conclusion. Why should we be looking for different ways of thinking about and living in the world? Because many of the dominant political social, and intellectual structures that currently underpin our society have proven themselves to be colossally flawed, so we need to begin looking for different ways of doing and thinking about things.
A new hologram exhibit at the New Museum features major contemporary artists (including Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois, Eric Orr, Ed Ruscha and James Turrell) and may change your understanding of the medium.
“Wow your accent sounds so amazing,” is a phrase I often hear when people detect my South African accent. Whereas this is usually a compliment — and I accept it graciously — it can also have the effect of creating a distance between me and the other person if they aren’t South African. In short, it can often clarify that they belong to this place and I am an alien in their territory. But as pop star Sting’s pithy “legal alien” phrase comes to mind I quickly snap out of my self-imposed victimization. Of late, however, it has been quite obvious that the art world still propagates a fascination with the “other.”
As good as the last Triennial was — and, all qualms, quibbles and philosophical differences aside, it was a pretty good survey of emergent art — what it didn’t have was a monster.
Adrián Villar Rojas’ “A person loved me” (2012) has already achieved show-stealer status at The Ungovernables, the second installment of the New Museum’s Triennial, snagging a feature by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times with the sweeping headline, “A Colossus in Clay Speaks a Generation’s Message.”
Post-colonial studies, the legacy of 19th and 20th century colonialism and imperialism, a hit on the academic circuit, underlies the raisone d’etre of the New Museum’s Triennale, The Ungovernables, the second Triennial devoted to global contemporary art. Artists are presented as “actors in the world around them rather than commentators,” and portrayed as “negatively ungovernable.” The show’s emphasis on a series of global “urgencies” casts a wide net focusing more on the message than the medium, which is both the show’s strength and its undoing.
There has been a fair amount of buzz surrounding Carsten Höller. His “mid-career” retrospective/whole building takeover of the New Museum opened last week. Determined to see for myself, I wandered into the space last Friday with a relatively open mind. My only previous knowledge of the artist was from his installation of slides in the massive turbine hall at the Tate Modern in London a couple of years ago. His installation there was pretty well received. Though I never saw it in person, it is easy to imagine how the installation fits into the Tate’s turbine hall shtick. Like Olafur Eliasson’s sun, or Ai Weiwei’s field of sunflower seeds, Höller’s slides were engaging and dramatic. They served as an anti-pretentious pallet cleanser, a preparatory shot of courage before heading into the art-soaked wilderness of that museum.
This Occupy Museum effort is the most peculiar Occupy Wall Street/art-related thing I’ve heard about yet. A protest is slated for tomorrow and intends to “occupy” the Frick Museum, MoMA and the New Museum.
![Post image for Psst, Pass It On … Flashmob Tonight at New Museum [UPDATE 3]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/perfect-match-HOME.jpg)
A little birdy told us that there’s a flashmob brewing tonight at the New Museum called “The Perfect Match.” We’re not sure of the details yet but we hear it will have quite an ending! Stay tuned as we find out more. UPDATE: We hear through the grapevine that the New Museum is doing everything possible to crush this burgeoning Flashmob, so we’re not sure what this will mean for this things success (and this bad weather ain’t going to help either).
What the hell is that diamond-shaped object floating in the sky? A photographer shot this unidentified object from the New Museum’s Sky Room Terrace, according to his testimony on a UFO site.
Let the avalanche of September 11 exhibitions begin. As the tenth anniversary of the attack approaches, the art world gears up to remember and reflect with some of the bigger (and most intriguing) shows slated to run at blockbuster institutions like the Met, MoMA PS1 and the New Museum, as well as the opening of the Memorial Museum itself at the World Trade Center site on September 12. This Wednesday, I attended a small and intimate show at 7 World Trade Center that was a bit of quiet before the storm
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Graffiti Writer Gets Pwnd by Marc Jacobs
A Truly Subversive Artist Is Not Necessarily Someone Who Is Theatrical or Gimmicky
Brooklyn Designer Held Without Bail for Hanging Plastic Bags from Trees
Gay Life Portrayed in Traditional Chinese Paper-cuts
North Korea's New Website
The Daily Practice of the Impossible
Should Museum Acquisitions Come at the Expense of their Education Departments?![Release Takeshi Miyakawa Now! [UPDATED] He's Free!](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/takeshi-miyakawa-hanging-plastic-bags-from-trees-146x90.jpg&h=60&w=97&zc=1)
Release Takeshi Miyakawa Now! [UPDATED] He's Free!
The Stellar Fucking Growth of Fuck Yeah Tumblelogs
