Mechanical Performance is back - with a vengeance

If the art.blogging.la writes about the Survival Research Laboratories, they are definitely in. Here is who they are:

Survival Research Laboratories was conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.

Just shows you how easy it is to get people to respect you as an artist: 1. Make a lot of sparks. 2. Keep making a lot of sparks for 27 years.

More Hirst critics...

There have been more, and more aggressive, Hirst critiques recently.

Paulo Freire: Discussing Dialogue

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was an educator. This might come as a suprize on an art blog, but Freire's theory of education saw education through culture in its most creative aspects. His most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, inspired many contemporary artists to create works on the verge of art, education and social work. It is no sin for a work of art to be socially active, and although I disagree with many of Freire's more political ideas, he is a challenging intellectual sparing partner for an artist to have. Here is a fragment of an interview from the book Dialogues in Public Art (don't hesitate to support this page and go to the Amazon page with the book description and a review - and who knows, maybe even buy and get the page its first cents)

PF:I am not sure whether I was able to explain to you how to struggle against the possibility of misunderstandings that provoke bad use of your proposals. For me, there is no solution. The answer is not to be angry, but to be morally more clear. Sometimes a distortion is innocent, sometimes it is preestablished, it is programmed. In any case, we have the duty to clarify.

The sort of distortion I am talking about, for example, relates to artists who go into a neighborhood to set up a "dialogue" and report back to their peers, without ever really leaving room for the people to speak for themselves. People employ the rhetoric of dialogue, but it's a false dialogue. For example, what if I went to an African American community to create a "dialogue", but I knew beforehand what I want the results to be?

PF: Yes, it is absolutely false. But look, I don't want to say that I am prevented from knowing what I would like to say before going there. Because, as a person, I am a project. If I am a project, it means that I have objectives, because if I did not have some objectives and some ends that I am fighting for, I could not be a project. And it is part of my project to conceptualize what kind of arguments I can use in order, for example, to work against racism. For me, this is legitimate. What is not legitimate is to try to impose on them precisely the arguments I thought of beforehand. It is not legitimate, because a true conversation cannot be preestablished. I cannot throw beforehand what you will say to me in answering my question. I have to become engaged in order to follow our process of conversation. Do you see? Of course, I have to program my conversation. Nevertheless, I have to know that my conversation cannot be precisely as I planned it.

When I came here today, and I have my questions...

PF: Yes. You have your questions, and you have anticipated a way of answering your questions. But these are not necessarily my answers.

I will only allow myself to point out that, clearly, this conversation can also be the dialogue between any artist and his subject/matter/material/.

Shoot

How do you know what it is like to be shot if you have never been shot?

- Chris Burden

Identical paintings by two different painters

This is just a curiosity, but I enjoyed it.
Two painters painted the same painting.
No, not 3 centuries ago. In 2004/5.
And not just anybody - Damien Hirst is one of the two (the painter Michael Luther being the other one).
The paintings are reproductions of a news photo.
(And of course, neither artist knew of the other one's project)
Several possible interpretations:
1. Anything is possible in the connect-the-dots painting era.
2. The concept is what counts - and it is quite different in both cases.
3. Great minds think alike.
4. Lazy minds create similar copies of other people's pictures.
Any other options?

Dada News

We've been to dada-like games, we've rediscovered mail art. Do you still want more meaning? Do you think art shouldn't forget the world it lives in? Then go to Wordnews, a project by Benjamin Fischer which displays the current news in an automated form resembling a dadaist poem, but with a message. The news that appears more often are shown in larger letters. (More about the technical side of the project here).
As this short Italian review suggests (excellent site, with some articles in English), Wordnews uses and puts into focus the "news looping" phenomenon in the current media: once a news trend starts, all the media go after it, anxious to get everything in "realtime". This causes a great homogeneity of information, with the exact same words and phrases reappearing constantly.
What is good about this work, though, is that it's not what one could call a critique. Nobody is pointing the finger. Benjamin Fischer shows us an echo of what we hear - while we forget the weight of the words that keep showering us endlessly. The words, here, stand alone, sometimes connected into phrases, often not. And we have to create the stories, write them, pronounce them for ourselves. We have to make sense of the raw information, deprived of the comforting context of the articles that contain it.
It is only important to remember that this is not a reflection of the world, or even of the media world, but of the world that is most heard on our media: the English-speaking, US-centric world. It is globalization in the narrowest of senses, underlining the common denominators and excluding the unique. For the acute observer, Fischer's work is also a warning.
The work is currently presented at the Oberwelt e.V. gallery in Stuttgart. It is the artist's first solo exhibition. It's great to know that some software-based works actually leave the internet and its haunting, virtual atmosphere from time to time.
(via we-make-money-not-art)

Mail Art

A couple of days ago there was an article at Fallon and Rosof's artblog about excellent recent mail art works. I figured many people probably aren't even sure if they know what mail art is, living in the digital era and all... And now I remembered there is a great site, www.mail-art.de, where you can not only learn about mail art, but also participate in mail art initiatives around the world. If you're an "established artist", you might feel this is childish (then again, don't take yourself so seriously!), if you're a beginner, an amateur, an aspiring star or a complete outsider, this could be your chance to do something new and original in the era of virtual communication. The projects come from many places around the world. Some of the ideas go deep, some are intimate or fairly difficult to execute, others seem things off the top of the head. Here is an example of the offers you'll find on the site:

THEME:		Draw me a "Terrorist"
Comment:		www.blackspecs.de
Info:		For my publication please send me all postal objects that deal with any technique.
Deadline:		09.11.2005
Artist:		Jeroen Teunen / 6 Muschamp Road / London SE15 4EF / United Kingdom / blackspecs@gmx.de
Posted:		01.04.2005

Other, less perfect, sites about/with mail art, can be found here and at this mail art webring.
If you still think mail art is dead, check out this blog of the International Union of Mail Artists, created by artist Ruud Janssen, and containing all the links you'll need to discover this wonderful universe.