If you, like so many art-worlders, are heading to the Miami art fairs next week, chances are you may be feeling a little grimy. Why? Not because of the humidity, but maybe because of the exploitative economic interactions and hierarchies on display at US’s biggest art shopping mall. The antidote to all this is #Rank, an event organized by artists William Powhida and Jen Dalton in collaboration with the Edward Winkleman Gallery, which will be park at the Seven art fair. #Rank will critique the blatant displays of wealth and status and the stratification of the art world through panels, artist projects and lectures. The details of #Rank were until recently unclear aside from a call for proposals, but now Powhida and Dalton have started announcing their artist projects, and they sound great. Here’s a preview of 5 projects that I find particularly interesting.
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YouTube Archive + Anarchy, Part 3
For the third and final installment in his series of YouTube Essays, called YouTube Archive + Anarchy, blogger and curator Brent Burket pretty much goes for broke. If this doesn’t get you pumped about YouTube, or at least disturbed enough to stop using it for a few days, there’s no hope for you. From black metal to necrophilia, surrealism and Alice Cooper, these are the YouTube videos you only find at 2 in the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Also, Jeffrey Deitch gets punched and bitches out his attackers like Woody Allen in a pink suit.
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Sound of Art is Loud, Sound of Partying Louder
Last Thursday, Paddy Johnson (AKA ArtFagCity) held a debut party for her ambient sound-collecting DJ battle record Sound of Art at Santos Party House, and I think our small sector of the art world collectively took the morning off on Friday. This short vacation ended with your humble writer as well as the Hyperallergic editor stumbling into work around 11am accompanied by groans and sensitivity to light. Thanks to the musicians that spun the album in their sets that night, the conclusion after the party, and post-copious LP and vodka sales, was that art sounds pretty loud, but art-partying sounds louder.
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YouTube Archive + Anarchy, Part 2
For the second in his series of YouTube Essays, YouTube Archive + Anarchy, blogger and curator Brent Burket selects a mix of art and music, collecting YouTube music videos, amateur documentation of video art pieces and performance art. Check out a Katy Perry introduction and feminist firecracker Karen Finley invading a Sinead O’Connor song, to disastrous and hilarious effect. Click through for the complete VJ set.
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YouTube Archive + Anarchy, Part 1
For a fan of art like me, YouTube is a gold mine. I remember when I was in college about the only access I had to the art and music scene in New York City was pouring over the New York Times in the library. The rest was imagination. YouTube brings art and music closer, no matter where you are or when you are. It’s a crazy archive that holds art, new and old. Sometimes its been sanctioned by the artist. Sometimes, not so much. The best thing about art on YouTube is the access that it allows for the viewer and also because of the exposure for artists. Some artists and gallerists might have an issue with that last point. But quite frankly, that’s their problem. Click through for a journey into YouTube’s anarchic archive of art and artistic materials.
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Kith & Kin by Man Bartlett
Man Barlett’s “Kin” is located in the main gallery of #TheSocialGraph exhibition at Outpost. It is one half of his work, “Kith and Kin” (2010), which was specially created for the exhibition.
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Social Mediaites Throw Real-Life Party at #TheSocialGraph
Last Friday, the virtual art world became the real one as fellow Twitter followers met one another in reality, Facebook friends shook hands and a certain performance artist crossed the thresholds between digital and analog. During #TheSocialGraph’s opening at Outpost in Ridgewood, a growing community that exists largely online met in person — and actually talked. Like, with sound, instantaneously. This was all helped along by a large keg and stacks of plastic cups that may have been an exercise in relational aesthetics, but probably were not.
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Being Telepresent
For #TheSocialGraph, I proposed a look at the next step in social media — telepresence, which, in its simplest form is a large-scale video chat meant to mimic the presence of someone in the room, and at its most complex can take the form of a roving, camera-enabled robot.
Since almost as early as the invention of the telephone, human beings have imagined the possibilities of video communication. How amazing would it be to see each other over the phone? That technology now exists, as cameras become embedded in our computers and our smart phones. But even Apple has had trouble pushing it past niche uses. Video chat, for most people, is just too weird.
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Nuclear Tropics by Space Slave Trade
As a preview to tonight’s #TheSocialGraph exhibition opening at Outpost (6-9pm) check out one of the pieces featured in the show, Space Slave Trade’s “Nuclear Tropics” (2010).
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Gagosian, Google Invest In Art Start Up Art.sy, But Why?
Vaguely-defined art startup Art.sy has found some pretty incredible backers, among them some of the biggest names in both contemporary art and tech. Larry Gagosian, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Russian heiress and contemporary art world butterfly Dasha Zhukova and Wendi Murdoch (wife of Rupert) are teaming up with young CEO Carter Cleveland to launch a “personalized online fine-art emporium,” Artinfo reports.
Yet the problem with turning contemporary art into a full-fledged business outside of the gallery game is that you run the risk of alienating art’s flighty cool factor. What troubles could art start-ups face?
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What To Do At Prospect 1.5’s Comeback Opening
Prospect.1 New Orleans was the biggest biennial ever staged on US soil, and that’s the least of the accomplishments of Dan Cameron’s 2008 exhibition. The show brought attention to what continues to be an area badly damaged by disaster and in danger of falling out of the public eye. Prospect 1.0 was a symbol of the resurgence of the city and the ability of contemporary art to provoke, possibly the height of the current biennial miracle vogue. The exhibition collected an international crew of artists and brought them to New Orleans to create projects that reacted to a local context. But two years later, what’s on for the show’s next incarnation?
