Posts tagged as:

Christo

Tuesday Links: The High Cost of the Star-Spangled Banner

by Rhett Jones on July 5, 2016

highCostMarching

The U.S. military’s marching band budget is almost three times as large as the annual sum being allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts. That’s $437 million dollars going to renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner and an Air Force rock band called Max Impact. Seriously, check out that rock band link. On a related note, it’s estimated that Americans spend $675m a year on fireworks. [New York Times]
Is Donald Trump the villain that protest art has been craving? Hyperallergic’s Carrie Dunne takes a look. Also, speaking of the Donald, the great George Saunders joins the ‘respected writer attends a Trump rally’ club. [Hyperallergic, New Yorker]
Iranian pop artist, Parviz Tanavoli, had his passport confiscated by authorities in Tehran this weekend. He was scheduled to attend a lecture in London that focused on his book, “European Women in Persian Houses.” As of July 4th, Tanavoli still did not know why he wasn’t allowed to travel. [The Art Newspaper]
Abbas Kiarostami, director of great films like “Where Is The Friends Home?” and “Close-Up,” as well as a large body of photography and installation work has died at the age of 76. He was reportedly undergoing treatment for cancer. [Al Jazeera]
Pieces of Christo’s Floating Piers have already appeared on eBay following the closing of the piece on July 3rd. The work is intended to be recycled but it seems some industrious person managed to snag a few chunks. The special socks that visitors wore are also available for $1000. [artnet News]
The United Nations has passed a nonbinding resolution that makes internet access a basic human right. [Gizmodo]
Pirates are now using YouTube’s 360° panorama feature to hide full-length films from the streaming video services automated content id systems. The resulting videos have an odd, online gallery showroom quality. While it’s a clever trick, as it is, this probably won’t become a widespread problem because it just looks weird. [Kill Screen]
Wow, you might want to think twice before co-signing for a student loan in New Jersey. Specifically, if the student dies the loans will not be forgiven. One bankruptcy lawyer describes the program as “state-sanctioned loan sharking.” [The New York Times]
While the verdict is still out on whether public interest will be able to sustain the new wave of virtual reality, Japan’s first VR porn festival was an overwhelming success. Mobs of people attended the gathering in Tokyo, causing organizers to shut off entry. Most of this stuff looks really uncomfortable. [The Next Web]

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Tuesday Links: All In

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on June 21, 2016

Damien Hirst created the above art work in support of Britain staying in the EU.

Artists and curators overwhelmingly do not support the Brexit. [Frieze Magazine]
“If the medieval herald, a town crier, existed today, it would likely be a brand ambassador for Airbnb, or maybe a freelance creative-infiltrator shouting aphorisms about being self-made. Sammak’s works are a constellation of urban surpluses and negations, mapping out the city-as-paradox illustrating separate spaces and times the infiltrator and the native occupy. The high-rise and the nail house facilitate starkly different livelihoods for their respective occupants. Town Crier is a successful testament to the malignant practices of the gentrifier. The modern city project isn’t aesthetic revitalization, it’s disaster relief.” —F.T. Hinton on Borna Sammak: Town Crier at American Medium. This show sounds, and looks, really good. Sammak recreates candy-colored signage and detritus from a slightly more over-the-top version of contemporary Brooklyn. [aqnb]
Douglas Coupland speculates on the future of tech, art, and the long-anticipated event horizon where they both collapse in on one another. Chiefly: what if there are no more big, revolutionary advances coming in either field? Maybe we’ll never have another moment as transformative as Warhol or smartphones. And maybe (likely) we shouldn’t be looking to Silicon Valley—whose cultural proclivities are conservative or kitschy—to define/shape the future of art. [e-flux]
Have we reached peak think-piece-ery? Here’s a letter-to-the-editor/reply from the author (over a review of Nicole Eisenman’s new show) that is so disposed to the semantics of identity politics that the art and the artist are almost absent from the conversation. Is the reality of contemporary art discourse just listing the demographics of artists and writers and critical theory references? I can’t even figure out what this is about, except for that fact that the painter is queer and female and the author is Asian. [Hyperallergic]
TSA New York’s annual Flat File program has put out a call for entries. Submit 4 images of small, unframed work by July 31st for the chance to be shown in the gallery in December and have your work kept on file for sale through next year. [Tiger Strikes Asteroid]
John Reuter, a man who has been working to stave off the extinction of one of the world’s largest cameras—the 20×24 inch Polaroid camera—is throwing in the towel. He cites lack of demand. Chuck Close is interviewed for the piece and is not happy. [The New York Times]
What kind of bullshit is this? In early June New York’s City Council passed a measure that would impose a time limit on the public review process at the Landmarks Preservation Commission—(one year for individual properties, two for historic districts). Protestors are asking Mayor Bill DeBlasio to veto the bill. [Curbed]
Artist Jumana Jaber and her family, including her son, a dissident musician, were able to flee Syria with the help of the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund. Now she teaches at Montclair State University (and make great assemblage-paintings) and her family can be as outspoken about the Syrian regime as they wish. This is exactly the kind of story we should be hearing more of out of the crisis. Sadly, their J-1 exchange visitor and companion visas will expire and they need to go through the insanely complicated process of applying for refugee status. [PRI]
Alissa Walker hails “The Floating Piers” in Sulzano, Italy as “Christo’s First Truly Important Work of Art.” Yes, many of Christo’s other pieces have been beautiful, but these temporary bridges could be a prototype for climate-change-related disaster relief, including a temporary bridge between Williamsburg and Manhattan during the Sandy-necessitated L train shutdown. [Gizmodo]
Missouri is installing energy generating photovoltaic tiles along a section of Route 66. These street pavers were invented by Scott and Julie Brusaw, a couple who claim that replacing all of America’s roads and parking lots with their pavers would generate more than three times the country’s electricity consumption in 2009. Let’s hope this process goes well. [Curbed]

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Week Twelve: Public Art for Athletes

by Corinna Kirsch on January 29, 2014

This week’s dream exhibitions brought to you by Lauren van Haaften-Schick, Jimmy McBride, and Jesse Darling.

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The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s “Ode to Joy” at the Brooklyn Museum

by Corinna Kirsch on July 19, 2013

The Bruces might not appeal to everyone, but their work is for everyone. Regrettably, the exhibition does not show this side of the Bruces, and it doesn’t do justice to the foundation’s varied projects, the more interesting of which cannot be represented in this, or possibly any, exhibition.

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$340m On a Christo Oil Barrel Sculpture is Too Much

by Paddy Johnson on November 27, 2012

Time to get angry about another gross display of wealth by the art world, all at the expense of the poor. According to The Guardian, Christo has plans to make the world’s largest sculpture from empty oil drums in Abu Dhabi, and now the project has the support of the Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a representative of the crown prince, his elder brother. A site near Liwa oasis has been approved.

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