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Treat Yo’ Self, Bueller-Style

by The AFC Staff on April 10, 2015

Sometimes great things just sorta happen. But if Ferris Bueller taught us anything, it’s that sometimes, you get the opportunity to make great things happen. Our experiences for auction are four different versions of the perfect day, so whether you prefer a country getaway or a film sesh with a documentary crew, here’s your chance to make Ferris proud.

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Friday Links: Calling all Art Hi$$$tory Majors

by The AFC Staff on April 10, 2015

A bunch of well-off people discuss how their Art History degree made them (surprise!) a success in other sectors. “My art history education was the first step in training my eye to recognize the recurring signatures of price movement in the financial markets,” says Jamie Crapanzano ’00, portfolio manager at Guggenheim Partners. The moral of the story: it’s alright to study art history, so long as you use it for anything but art history. [e-flux via The Daily Princetonian]
Artist Mary Beth Heffernan is working to humanize the face-covering protective suits worn by ebola health workers. She makes sticker-backed photo portraits of the workers’ smiling faces for them to where on their suits, like a badge. What’s funny about this story is that photo technology is scarce in Liberia, so her subjects swiped their self-portrait stickers and started sticking them everywhere, including their kids’ backpacks. [NPR]
Is the enormous clothing trend in art localized to the south? We reported the trend dead in New York last month at The Armory, but Andrew Russeth has spotted it on the rise again in the SP-Arte fair in São Paulo. [Artnews]
The original cast of Twin Peaks is rallying behind David Lynch following his announcement that he could no longer continue working with Showtime on the series revival. We couldn’t agree more with Sheryl Lee, the actress who played Laura Palmer: Twin Peaks without David Lynch is like a girl without a secret. [Nerdist]
This one’s coming at you a couple days late, but it’s still worth celebrating. The Mayor of Boston declared April 9 “Riot Grrrrl Day.” Here are some of the actual words from the official proclamation: ““Riot grrrls redefine the language used against them and continue to fight the newest incarnations of patriarchy. In doing so, they ironically confirm one ex-congressman’s accidental wisdom: ‘the female body has ways to try to shut that down.’ It sure does: women’s voices telling their stories can shut that down.” Did reading that give anyone else happy chills? [Stereogum via Boston Magazine]
Two groups from MIT teamed up to make wearable social media (in t-shirt form) so wearers can find and make IRL friends. The garments might be technologically advanced, but just like Google glass, they’re just not that cute. In other words, scientists at MIT made t-shirts that only an MIT student could love. [Hyperallergic]
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation released the names of its 2015 Fellowship recipients. Let’s hear it for Fine Arts awardees Rick Araluce, Miyoshi Barosh, Amy Bennett, Matthew Blackwell, Mel Chin (woot!), Amanda Church, Russell Crotty, Amanda Davie, Agnes Denes, Fred Escher, Tim Hawkinson, Frank Holliday, Vishal Jugdeo, Mary Kelly (about time!), Diane Landry, Michael C. McMillen, Sabina Ott, M. Louise Stanley, Kyle Staver, Kukuli Velarde, Royce Weatherly, and Pinar Yoldas. [Guggenheim Memorial Foundation]
Last Saturday, a man terrorized NYC commuters with a giant black dildo. The Subway: just like reality TV, but not at all from the comfort of your own home. [Death and Taxes]

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Power Women = Power Art

by The AFC Staff on April 9, 2015

What does it mean to be a Power Woman? In this auction benefit for Art F City it means you’re bad ass: You make great art and have been doing since forever. You’re an influential powerhouse within the art community. You are deserving of recognition for the work you do. In short, you are nothing less than amazing.

In honor of AFC’s upcoming Power Women 10th Anniversary Benefit, we’re sharing ten artworks for auction by ten power women. You’ve got four days to bid. Better get to that.

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Thursday Links: Cat People

by The AFC Staff on April 9, 2015

A pretty great collection of artist portraits with their cats. The pictures are drawn from Alison Nastasi’s new book “Artists and their Cats”, which means it far exceeds your typical blog listicle. [This is Colossal]
After watching (and transcribing) no less than 4 hours of video at Artists Space Hito Steyerl show, I drew a few conclusions. Great show, but sometimes the metaphors don’t quite work. [Artnet News]
The Walker Art Center’s “International Pop” exhibition uncovers pop art that you won’t find in any art history book. It surveys artists from all over the world who turned away from abstraction in the fifties and sixties, featuring work by German, Japanese, and Icelandic artists left out of the British and American-dominated Pop Art market. Oh, and let’s not forget women. “I was always accepted in the circles of male Pop artists back in the day,” says arist Rosalyn Drexler, “but it never occurred to them that I was the only one in the circle not getting paid.” *Sigh* [New York Times]
“How much is that painting?” I asked [of a Blinky Palermo]. “That’s on loan from a private gallery,” the [Zwirner] gallery assistant on my right answered (there are always two guarding the front), with machine-like efficiency. “Are there any available for sale?” “Most of them aren’t.” “Which ones are?” “Not very many.” Very entertaining. [Artnews]
Political campaign merch is big business. Why buy a Hillary Clinton button when you could show your support with $15 napkins or a onesie? And who wouldn’t want a $75 woven blanket with a picture of Paul Rand? [The Guardian]
The most remote human settlement on earth–Edinburgh of the Seven Seas–is holding an architectural competition to make life on the South Atlantic isle more self-sufficient and sustainable. Competition hopefuls are staring down some steep challenges. The island is actually an active volcano. It last erupted in 1961, wiping out the community’s crayfish factory. Renewable energy is a problem, too. Wind turbines can’t withstand the beating the island takes from strong winds. So why would anyone want to live there? It’s totally beautiful. And with very limited internet and no airport, you pretty much get to ignore the rest of the world. [Hyperallergic]
“It’s Official: The Boomerang Kids Won’t Leave,” the Times Magazine confirmed in 2014.. Of course the kids stay home because they can’t get jobs that pay rent. But the function of millennial-speak is to disguise structural causes (the lack of jobs) as human desires (the kids want to stay home), and to justify further measures (make hiring and firing easier) in terms of those desires.” [n+1]
The number of black Americans killed by police in 2014 outsrips the number of people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While this alone is a sobering thought, the data comes from a website called killedbypolice.net. That’s right. Things have gotten so out of hand, someone started a website in 2013 to keep track. [Raw Story via Killed by Police]

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Wednesday Links: Chickens, Holograms and Commemorative Sculptures

by The AFC Staff on April 8, 2015

Dave Poulin’s controversial Lucille Ball sculpture. Critics say the sculpture is creepy

“On the island of Kauai, chickens have not just crossed the road. They are also crowing in parking lots, hanging out at beaches and flocking in forests.” This, my friends, is how you write a lede. Chickens are everywhere in Hawaii. [The New York Times]
Our benefit workout video made the L.A. Times. Woot! Thank-you Carolina Miranda. [Culture High & Low]
Ben Valentine emailed a questionnaire to 20 women artists and writers on the subject of Deep Lab, new media and technology-based art, and representation. Seven responded. The craziest response comes from Jennifer Chan, who runs down a laundry list of terrible experiences in response to the question: Briefly describe the barriers you face within a new media art and technology framework as a WOC or QTWOC. [Hyperallergic]
One minute a bust, the next minute, a hologram. A few hours after police removed the sculpture of Edward Snowdon from a Brooklyn park, a hologram of Snowdon’s image appeared in the same spot. The Illuminator art collective, responsible for the hour-long projection, are outspoken about their admiration of Snowdon and the anonymous group that installed the first bust. [WPIX New York]
Those guys from Scrubs Twitter-pledged to make pizzas for same-sex weddings in Indiana. The tweet has been reposted 8,000 times. We hope they’re prepared to fill a lot of orders. [People]
It’s a busy week for commemorative public sculptures. In Celoron, New York, artist Dave Poulin is offering to re-work his statue sculpture of Lucille Ball. He’s responding to a barrage of complaints about the work, which doesn’t quite resemble the actress. But the most ardent criticism has to do with its alleged creepiness. [NPR]
Deadline for the VOX XI juried exhibition is coming up on May 3. Vox Populi is looking for work that “pushes the boundaries in terms of form and content, is ambitious and timely, and is experimental and risk-taking.” Get to it, ambitious, experimental boundary-pushers! [Vox Populi]

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Tuesday Links: Bad Questions

by The AFC Staff on April 7, 2015

Above is a promo shot from White God, a film about a rag-tag team of dogs that start a revolution. An interview with Director Kornél Mundruczó that covers such topics as: Is it hard to work with dogs? Why didn’t you CGI the dogs? Are dogs aware of the camera in any way? Amazing. [Bomb Magazine]
The Times is going crazy with the college tuition articles. Tis the season, I guess. Today’s reading includes an article on how Mayor DeBlasio makes an upper middle class living and will still struggle to pay tuition for his two kids, an op ed piece about why it’s not state cuts that are pushing tuition fees up but a vast increase in administrative positions at Universities, and a new prize that awards universities for economic diversity. [The New York Times]
A large statue bust of whistleblower Edward Snowden was illegally erected in Fort Greene Park by a trio of artists, and quickly removed by authorities. The crazy thing is, that authorities covered the statue before they removed it. [Animal New York, Gothamist]
Blake Gopnik thinks the role of criticism is to “radically alter interpretations of art”. LOL!!!! The statement was made on the Volta/Artnet panel on online art criticism with Gopnik, Christian Viveros-Faune and Ben Genocchio and I couldn’t disagree more. Count me on the CVF side of things: It’s not rocket science. [Vimeo]
Oh no! Pearl River is closing because its rent has quintupled since 2003. It will now cost more than 500k per month. [Crains New York]
Australian performance artist Casey Jenkins is performing unskilled labor tasks in the gallery, and she’s taking requests, so long as you pay her the standard day rate commensurate with the type of labor. The point is to draw attention to notions of value, and how work shapes the personal life of the laborer. The drawback? You have to choose a job from a dropdown menu with 22 options. Facebook CEO is an option, but we don’t think Mark Zuckerberg will be hiring rivals anytime soon. [Huffington Post]
Website suffix alternatives to .com and .net are getting more oddly specific and colorful. .wtf is a thing, and .sucks is scheduled to debut in June. Companies are nervous. They’re buying up new domain names to avoid criticism from competitors and cyberbullies. Some suffixes are costly, and companies that want to protect their reputation online are calling out registry companies for extortion. [NPR]
BTW, still no word on whether eflux and Deviantart have been awarded .art. Artdomainname.com says sometime in 2015, maybe later. [artdomainname]
Is Hurricane Katrina to blame for the deluge of dystopic fiction and disaster films flooding the market over the past few years? One writer seems to think so. [Flavorwire]

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Monday Links: Smile

by The AFC Staff on April 6, 2015

$Smile, crocodile. From Math Bass's "Newz!" series, 2014.$

Smile, crocodile. From Math Bass, the “Newz!” series, 2014.

A frog with a sad smile. [Imgur]
“Karen” is an app from British art collective Blast Theory that delivers life tips and heart-to-hearts directly to your smartphone. But be careful. Karen, the persona driving the app, whose personality and responses are customized according to the user’s personality, might just get a little too friendly. She’s programmed to overshare, and call at inappropriate hours. [The New York Times]
A case for art majors: you might not make buckets of money when you graduate, but according to a new study, you will get laid. [artnet News via The Tab]
Unsurprising, but postinternet art hasn’t hit Cambodia yet. Internet usage has not swelled as it has in the west, so that type of networked artwork doesn’t fit the mold there. How useful is the term, if it only applies to certain physical locations? [Rhizome]
Art as potential fodder for money laundering. “Unlike many other real assets, such as farmland or property, art is also movable, which is handy for buyers who do not plan to tell the taxman about it. It can be a relatively discreet way of investing, too: Christie’s arranged $916m of private purchases in 2014, compared with just $266m in 2009.” [The Economist]
The Big D gets a Big Sculpture Prize. Dallas’ Nasher Sculpture Center announced plans for the inaugural International Nasher Prize for Sculpture, a $100,000 prize awarded to “a living artist in recognition of a significant body of work.” The winner will be announced in fall 2015. [Glasstire]
Clinton on Clinton! Hillary Clinton has leased a campaign office at 1 Pierrepoint Plaza and the corner of Clinton Street. We care because this means that Clinton’s offices and AFC’s offices will be within walking distance of each other. Maybe we’ll see her out at Shake Shack? [The New York Times via Politico]
Journalists and editors, please check your facts with utmost diligence. Yesterday, Rolling Stone officially retracted “A Rape on Campus,” a story published in fall 2014 about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia. After suspicions arose around the details of the article, the magazine requested an independent report from Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism. What follows, in the link, is the Columbia report, whose writers find fault not just with the reporting, but with the magazine’s editors. “But the most egregious failures of transparency in ‘A Rape on Campus’ cannot be chalked up to writing style. They obfuscated important problems with the story’s reporting.” [Rolling Stone]

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Monday Links: Jimmy Van Bramer, Protector of the Realm

by The AFC Staff on March 30, 2015

Image courtesy of Jimmy Van Bramer

Jimmy Van Bramer, one of New York City’s most active council members, is due to submit a bill that will allow for community feedback on public art commissions. Van Bramer envisions town-hall-style meetings early on in the design process—this is necessary. Re: Public outcry against the Jeff Koons statue in California and here, in Long Island City, Ohad Meromi’s pink-man sculpture. [New York Times]
In Bangladesh, a blogger was knifed to death on a busy street in Dhaka. According to local sources, he had been targeted before because of “anti-Islamic writing.” This incident marks the second writer-related killing in Bangladesh this month. [BBC News]
“To brutally summarize a lot of scholarly texts: contemporary art is made possible by neoliberal capital plus the internet, biennials, art fairs, parallel pop-up histories, growing income inequality. Let’s add asymmetric warfare—as one of the reasons for the vast redistribution of wealth—real estate speculation, tax evasion, money laundering, and deregulated financial markets to this list.” [e-flux Journal]
Either selfies are evil, or people are. Over the weekend, Instagram was filled with people smiling for selfies against the backdrop of the East Village fire. [New York Post]
In related news, both Coachella and Lollapalooza are banning selfie sticks this year. (Coachella reps calls them “narcissistics,” lol.) [Stereogum]
Best read of the week, and possibly the month: “The Rise of the Cryptopticon.” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies and law professor at the University of Virginia, tracks the legal history of privacy and surveillance in the United States, from the 20th century to our digital age. [The Hedgehog Review via Alexis Madrigal]
Finally! Macaroni salad and plain Jello are cool again. Drop that kale and get yourself to a Denny’s because normcore food is a thing now. Supposedly. [The Awl]
Yep, art by famous artists = still really expensive. Roy Lichtenstein’s “The Ring (Engagement)” is expected to fetch around $50 million at auction at the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 12. [Huffington Post]
You too can get laid like a Lannister. British sex toy company Bondera released their “Game of Bones” product line, a Game of Thrones-themed lineup of dildos and bondage gear for sci-fi/fantasy and cheesy innuendo lovers everywhere. God, their copywriters are so lucky. [Flavorwire via Mashable]
Chicago jack-of-all-art-trades Shannon Stratton named the new chief curator of the Museum of Arts and Design. You’re welcome, New York. [The Observer]
Meet Jon Stewart’s replacement, South-African comedian and guy who seems way young—but hey, we’re rooting for you—Trevor Noah. [New York Daily News]

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Monday Links: Medieval Reactions, Alien Art Handlers

by The AFC Staff on March 23, 2015

Only the New Yorker editorial staff could get away with the line “It feels good to live like the one per cent.” Yes, after reviewing the bacon cheeseburger, chicken paillard, and the fudgy brownie, that’s exactly the emotion I would have, too. [The New Yorker]
Kids love that song from the Frozen soundtrack. One adult agrees with their passion, to the chagrin of every other parent in the world: “Whoa,” say my friends with small kids. “If ‘Let It Go’ were on an endless loop in your home, and your car, you would actually hate the song with a teeth-gnashing passion as we do.” [The Weeklings]
“When you and the squad are smashing karaoke.” There’s a meme-worthy medieval painting for everyone on Medieval Reactions [Twitter @MedievalReacts]
In light of the Hito Steyerl show at Artists Space, her essay “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective” is worth a look. The thesis here is that the diminished importance of the horizon line in art has created a feeling of groundlessness and disorientation, but also freedom. [e-flux Journal]
Hey, Kelly Kapowski, identity politics look good on you, gurl. [Saved by the Bell Hooks]
As if you needed another reason love belting out the chorus to “Dancing On My Own” from the middle of the dance floor (you know it’s drunk o’clock when Robyn enters the rotation), the avant-pop star just announced her intent to launch a festival promoting women in technology. [Pitchfork]
Do you love mall kiosks? Candy Crush invites? Comic Sans? Republican governor and all-around terrible human Scott Walker? We didn’t think so. That’s the assumption driving the Scott Walker Loves Tumblr. It’s an aggregate for things you hate, and things so subtly annoying, you never knew you hated them until now. [Scott Walker Loves]
Here’s a looping video narrative by Jeremy Couillard in which two alien art handlers fold up a virtual painting. No idea what to make of this. [The Art Handlers]

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Thursday Links: Robot Petting Zoo

by The AFC Staff on March 19, 2015

Photo by Simon Jardine

Wake up. Smell the coffee—or the perfume of artist Sara Ludy’s “Sea Basement.” Ludy’s New Hive project showcases several round objects emanating differently branded “vapors.” [New Hive]
At least nineteen people have been shot and killed by gunmen who attacked Tunisia’s parliament and Bardo museum. [United Press International]
Robots and drones are the talk of the town at the 2015 edition of SXSW. For those who prefer robots, enter the robot petting zoo. If digital advertising is your fancy, there’s a computer-generated drone flying above the city. Of course, this is only after these flying robots were banned by festival organizers, who have instituted a “no drone policy.” [NPR, MIT Technology Review, TIME]
Just your daily dose of sexy Photoshop-styling gone wrong in lingerie. The eyes of this “Sexy Babe Babe” are not human! [eBay]
303 Gallery has announced it will launch a publishing wing, 303 in Print. Its director, Fabiola Alondra, comes from Fulton Ryder, Richard Prince’s gallery/publisher/bookshop. [303 Gallery]
The New Yorker goes all VICE on South Korea. New Yorker contributor Patricia Marx goes undercover to report on South Korea’s plastic-surgery culture. She doesn’t go under the knife, but she does spend some time on the pre-consultation questions. Sample survey question: If you get the result you want from plastic surgery, what’s the thing you want most to do?

[] Upload a selfie without using Photoshop

[] Get a lover

[] Find a job

[] Enter a competition for face beauty

Can’t wait for the New Yorker exposé on “face beauty competitions.” [The New Yorker]

“You Must See this Amazing Richard Serra Sculpture in Qatar’s Sand Dune” reads an artnet headline followed by a slideshow of images that are nearly indistinguishable from a car commercial. See Jacob Pabst and his friends standing around awkwardly in the desert near their Escalade. Is this native content for The Qatar Museum’s recently commissioned Serra sculpture? It exists in the sand dunes just outside of Doha: four steel plates standing 15m high in the middle of the desert (forever). [Artnet News]
Who’s your favorite Brit? Nominations are open now for the Turner Prize. Think of someone under fifty, born or living in the UK, who has “had an outstanding exhibition in the last twelve months.” Nominate an artist who’s already having a very a good year, and make their 2015 the best year yet. [Tate]
Want to attend the 2015 Creative Time gala honoring artist Vik Muniz? Plan on spending at least $1,500 per ticket. What if all you want to do is send a custom Instagram “love message” to Creative Time and Muniz? That 25-word message will cost you $1,000. We’re not really sure how this works, but ah, money! [Creative Time]

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