Posts tagged as:

Chinatown Soup

The 10 Weirdest AFC Stories of 2016

by Michael Anthony Farley on December 30, 2016
Thumbnail image for The 10 Weirdest AFC Stories of 2016

Equal parts surreal and horrifying, 2016 was basically an Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. Given how apocalyptic and strange every headline from the mainstream news media has been this past year, it’s easy to overlook all the weird shit that went down in the art world.

But this year was chock-full of crazy art world stories, often that intersected with politics. (Remember a few weeks ago, when Madonna charged Art Basel visitors thousands of dollars to watch her grind on a chair while dressed as a clown, covering Britney Spears’ “Toxic” in front of a giant projection of Donald Trump?) It’s hard to even pick a “top 10”, but here’s our best effort to round-up the weirdest art stories we reported on in 2016:

Read the full article →

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: The Art World Never Shuts Down

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on August 15, 2016
Thumbnail image for This Week’s Must-See Art Events: The Art World Never Shuts Down

We all talk about how the art world shuts down in August, but a brief look at Friday’s schedule shows how much of a fallacy that’s becoming. Bushwick is full of openings that night from Signal’s exhibition of artists to respond to stories penned by three writers to Hood Gallery’s two person show for Tim Long and Jack Shaefer looking at what they call “self-defense prosthetics (canes, slingshots etc.)

It’s also still hot as hell, so we’ve recommended a few summertime screenings. The real trick to dealing with that, though, might be to just get out of the city for a week.

Read the full article →

This Week’s Must See Events: All Goth Timelines Lead to Brunch

by Rhett Jones on July 11, 2016
Thumbnail image for This Week’s Must See Events: All Goth Timelines Lead to Brunch

This is a great week for some of the more obscure haunts around the city. Not only are the DIY venues bringing some good programming but we have a lot of stuff to check out at museums that don’t get as much attention as the big guys.

We start the week off with a cyborg sex lecture, move into what will probably be an excellent drawing show of found speaker screens and finish out with a mobile sound installation and zine fest. Mark your calendars, this is a good one.

Read the full article →

How an Art Exhibition in New York Led to Harassment from Chinese Authorities

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 26, 2016
Thumbnail image for How an Art Exhibition in New York Led to Harassment from Chinese Authorities

This story has all the elements of a 1990s cyberpunk thriller: hackers, foreign government agents, and multinational corporations. But this is terrifying reality in 2016. A collaboration between American and Chinese activists, artists, and programmers has resulted in FIREWALL, a pop-up internet cafe/art installation that lays bare the censored version of the internet mainland Chinese citizens have access to. When visitors search a term at one of the consoles, they see the results in both Google and state-controlled Chinese equivalent Baidu.. That gesture appears innocent enough—after all, FIREWALL merely presents the internet as curated by the Chinese state. Those very censors, however, seem pretty unhappy about it.

Read the full article →

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Hacking Dystopias

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 22, 2016
Thumbnail image for This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Hacking Dystopias

This weekend’s must-see events include a lot of AFC’s friends and favs, from Friday’s discussion on hacktivism as part of Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s project FIREWALL Internet Cafe to fundraiser events featuring the work of AFC’s own Matthew Leifheit and F.A.G. Bar artist Macon Reed on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. But during the week, do check out solo shows from Leanne Shapton (Tuesday) and Sherrie Levine (Wednesday). Thursday’s all about dystopia, with sci-fi cityscapes by Romain Erkiletlian and found hyper-generic product packaging from Maryam Jafri. Hack on, New York. 

Read the full article →