- What is it about the Turner Prize and its media circus that always brings up the tired “But is it art?” question. That’s arguably the dumbest and least relevant discussion an artwork can generate. This year’s winners, Assemble, are a collective of former architecture students who found fanciful uses for vacant buildings in Liverpool. The daily Telegraph’s art critic Mark Hudson didn’t agree with the selection: “Why bring it in as art? If you’re just looking for stuff that isn’t pretentious and is useful, why don’t you nominate B&Q or Oxfam? … It’s great if art can be useful. But just because it’s useful doesn’t make it art.” That’s a sentiment I’m generally inclined to agree with, but it’s really not applicable here. [BBC]
- Brian Boucher shares his account of diving with artist Trevor Paglen. Paglen took a group of 10 art lovers diving 70 feet under the ocean to look at the fiber optic cables that run along the ocean floor. [artnet News]
- Zachary A. Bennett visited the SATELLITE Show and shared this account of Open Space’s “Stupid Bar,” the rowdy “competition” across the hall from our space. [Huffington Post]
- Controversy is brewing over the recent appointment of Bartomeu Marí as director of Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). More than 340 artists—including 2015 Venice Biennale Silver Lion winner Im Heung-soon and media artist Park Chan-kyung—signed a statement questioning Marí’s record, especially in light of his handling of last spring’s censorship debacle at Barcelona’s MACBA Museum. The group is demanding reforms to protect artistic freedom, citing the South Korean government’s increasing bureaucratic restrictions on the arts. [The Korea Times]
- Would you believe this? There’s video of a woman stealing a wreath off the front door of a Toronto home at 3AM. It was silver, sparkly, and worth $200. “It’s egregarious,” said detective Frank Olsen. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of this and I’ve been doing this a long time.” [National Post]
- Annette Kelm, the Berlin-based photographer who made the long list of the AGO’s AIMIA Prize, has won the Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photographer. Upcoming shows include a Jens Hoffman-curated solo at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art next year. [Artforum]
- The Philadelphia Daily News probably has the most on-point cover today: Trump making a Hitler salute. [@CarlAnka]
- Helpful career advice: “Dear Video Artists if you are going to have a section on your website called Current Work don’t make every single Vimeo link private?” [@MatthewLawrence]
- Buyers remorse has hit Jean Nouvel’s 100 Eleventh Avenue. The Chelsea condo is less “vision machine” and more “wind tunnel”, allege residents. Woe be the problems of a mid-aughts-designed glass curtain wall. [Curbed]
- An interview with artist Katie Rose Pipkin on her social media bots. [Furtherfield]
- Last week I [Michael] thought Vector Gallery’s Satanic Suicide Hotline was a far more subversive take on an occult lounge than the Swamp of Sagittarius at Art Basel Miami Beach. Maybe I was wrong? It turns out an altercation in the Swamp of Sagittarius led to the infamous stabbing incident. Vector might have had portraits of Charles Manson and text inciting viewers to murder, but its competition inspired an actual attempted homicide. Obviously, this was a terrible thing and horrible for all parties involved, but noteworthy as yet another parallel between the two spaces. [Gothamist]
