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VICE

Monday Links: Don’t We All Want a Dyke for President?

by Michael Anthony Farley on October 10, 2016

i-want-a-dyke-for-president

Zoe Leonard’s 1992 poem “I Want a Dyke for President” is justifiably having a moment. The piece has been blown up and installed underneath the Standard Hotel, and has recently gone viral as a video featuring Mykki Blanco reciting the poem. Basically, we have the two most unpopular major-party candidates ever, and “I Want a Dyke for President” sums up so many frustrations. [The Creators Project]

After jilted Marina Abramović collaborator Ulay was awarded a quarter million Euros a few weeks ago in the largest conceptual art lawsuit ever, Noah Charney tries to figure out just how much Abramović made and how. Unfortunately, he never really gets to the bottom of which works sold for how much and to who, but it’s a decent intro to the commodification of performance art. [Salon]

Creative Time director Nato Thompson describes Doomocracy as “less like hanging art in a museum and more like ‘putting on an opera at the Met.’” The Pedro Reyes installation spans multiple rooms of a derelict warehouse, and tackles issues from school shootings to climate change in the style of a haunted house. We can’t wait to see it. [artnet News]

Speaking of giant creepy abandoned buildings, this VICE documentary about Ohio’s sprawling “Ghost Malls” is amazing. Journalist Rick McCrank interviews photographers and ameature filmmakers who explore abandoned malls, and you come to realize how absurd and tragic the typology of the shopping center is—it’s the closest thing many suburbanites have to public/civic space, but since it’s privatized, its fate is tied to the whims of the market. [VICE]

Reflecting on Thomas Heatherwick’s $150 million “Vessel” slated for Hudson Yards, Aaron Betsky muses that spectacle-driven installation art has supplanted grandiose architecture as site of collective experience. I’m not entirely sold on that argument—the truth within that statement might have more to do with economics. It seems that the private sector is increasingly more likely to fund expensive art than the public sector is to fund expensive architecture. Most civic buildings are now designed by budget and zoning, but plenty of contemporary high-end private property still has a sense of whimsy (I’m thinking of Herzog & de Meuron’s cathedral-like Miami Beach parking garage). And many museums strive for both. [Dezeen]

Rob Goyanes is the best. Here’s his take on accelerationism, late capitalism, and environmental disaster as they manifest (/in) Miami. [Temporary Art Review]

An interview with East New Yorker Patrick Eug‎éne, who uses abstract expressionist painting to discuss gentrification. [PBS]

This is such a good idea. In many gentrifying cities, there’s paradoxically a surplus of school buildings due to closures or replacements. St. Louis is considering turning a former school into workforce housing for teachers. [Education Dive]

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Thursday Links: At The Corner of Bill Cunningham and 5th

by Rhett Jones on July 7, 2016

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The corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue is temporarily being renamed “Bill Cunningham Corner.” The Mayor is allowed to rename a street for a week, in order to make it permanent, the change would have to be approved by the city council. [DNAinfo]
ArtList, an app startup for anonymous secondary market sales of art has shut down. Artnet News spoke with art advisor Todd Levin about the startup’s downfall. His view is that internet-based platforms aren’t ready for high-end work and can only hope for “momentarily younger hotter artists like Parker Ito, Kour Pour, and Ibrahim Mahama, who don’t always stand up to the test of time.” [artnet News]
Under the Sun, the documentary about North Korea has been released and currently has an 83% score on Metacritic. The film was controversially pulled from MoMA’s Doc Fortnight Festival over fears of retaliation from North Korea. That decision resulted in longtime assistant curator, Sally Berger, being fired. [Metacritic]
Young Thug says there is no such thing as gender. While no one should hurt themselves trying to pat him on the back, homophobia is a rampant problem in the hip-hop world and it’s kind of a big deal that those words are coming from the most-hyped rapper around. [Dazed]
A reminder that you do not have to enter a police station to ‘catch ’em all’ in the new Pokemon augmented reality game. [Polygon]
28 years later, Anthony Haden-Guest explains how he did NOT kill Jean-Michel Basquiat.[artnet News]
Vice has bought a majority stake in Garage magazine, a Russian oligarch’s wife’s “art, architecture, fashion and design” publication. Having never read Garage we can’t speak to the quality of the art coverage. But, they have an app where you can check out issues and if you use it to scan Kendall Jenner’s photo at the following link you’ll “bring her to life.” [Recode]
You have exactly one extra second to get those grant applications in this year. [Phys.org]

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Wednesday Links: Canadian Women Edition

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on May 4, 2016

Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz, the Republican presidential candidate who once said “We need to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts,” has dropped out of the race after losing the Indiana primary. This inspired Samantha Bee to tweet the above in reference to Cruz’s anti-abortion stance. [Twitter]
The Baltimore Museum of Art has named Christopher Bedford as its new director. Bedford is curating the American pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale and will be leaving his post at Brandeis University’s Rose Museum. [The Baltimore Sun]

Real estate developer/art collector Aby Rosen has been ordered to pay New York $7 million in back taxes after some shady art dealings. [Forbes]

Suzy Lake has been awarded the sixth annual Scotiabank Photography Award. The award includes a $50,000 cash prize and a solo show for the Toronto-based artist at the Ryerson Image Center in 2017. [Canadian Art]

App as conceptual art project: Disk Cactus, an Oakland-based artist duo, have created the iTunes app AI*SCRY. Playing off of AI and “scrying” (a method of crystal ball divination), the app adds words pulled from Microsoft’s COCO image recognition database to whatever images you choose to snap with your smartphone camera. The descriptors of this project — ”childlike”, “playful”, “whimsical” — makes this seem less conceptual art project and more an interactive art prototype that could be sold off to a start-up or adapted for an agency. [Hyperallergic]

In animal news, wild gorillas have been found to hum happy songs while they eat. Two sound files are embedded in the article. Singing might be an overstatement for what this is—it’s more like a guttural growl. [New Scientist]

The FBI has searched suspected mobster Robert Gentile’s home for clues related to the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, one of the largest unsolved art thefts ever. [The Boston Globe]

Iranian artist Atena Farghadani has been freed after spending more than a year in prison. Farghadani was arrested last year and original sentenced 12 years for a satirical cartoon that depicted Iranian government members as monkeys and goats for bills that would restrict access to voluntary sterilization and contraception. [Art Newspaper]

The Biennale de Montreal announced their preliminary artist list. New works will be commissioned by Moyra Davey and Anne Immhof, and the rest seems to be evenly split between international (Joe Namy, Frances Stark, Nicole Eisenman) and Canadian (Valerie Blass, Luis Jacob, Nadia Belerique). [ARTnews]

Artist Eric Oglander and writer Gideon Jacobs have a new column “Accidental Internet” in which they recontextualize found imagery that is “beautiful, compelling, or interesting, that was not created with the intention of being beautiful, compelling, or interesting.” [VICE]

Ilma Gore, the artist who drew Donald Trump with a micropenis, reports that she was assaulted by a Trump supporter near her home in Los Angeles. A man in a black Honda Civic drove up, exited the car, punched her in the face, and shouted “Trump 2016!” [The Huffington Post]

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Thursday Links: Refuge Camp Fashion, Cooper Union Shake-Up, Sex Tape as Net Art

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 11, 2015

Oh god no. The website Polyvore lets fashionistas “curate” user-generated shopping boards with different themes. Someone thought it was a good idea to make one inspired by Shabat Gula, the Afghani orphan famously photographed in a refugee camp for the cover of National Geographic. When I think of war orphans living in refugee camps, $95 cardigans, Abercrombie jeans, and sparkly “Dolce Vita” flats don’t generally come to mind. [Polyvore]

Jamshed Bharucha, the Cooper Union’s hugely unpopular president, has announced his resignation. This comes on the heels of five trustees resigning from the art school’s board and years of student protests in response to Bharucha’s policies. [Hyperallergic]

Apparently the buyer of the $141.3 million record-breaking Giacometti sculpture was hedge-fund billionaire Steven A Cohen. [The New York Times]

Emma Sulkowicz—the Columbia University student who carried a mattress to protest the school’s refusal to expel her alleged rapist—has a new, controversial web-based artwork. Ceci N’est Pas Un Viol or “This is Not a Rape” comprises surveillance camera footage of the artist and a male friend engaging in violent (but consensual) sex. [Huffington Post]

Analog special effects legend Rick Baker has closed his studio and auctioned off beloved props and prosthetics from some of the 20th century’s most iconic films. He discusses how CGI killed the industry, leading to the somehow boring explosion-fest blockbusters we now have to sit through all summer. [VICE]

Baynard Woods, musician and journalist, laments the trend of studio spaces and venues in Baltimore’s Station North Arts and ~~Gentrification~~ Entertainment District continually being closed for “code violations” and then redeveloped as office space. [City Paper]

Keith Tillford critiques Dis’s “Style and Customs in the 2020s”, a characteristically tongue-in-cheek set of crowd-sourced predictions for the next, likely horrible decade. It’s next to impossible to disagree or agree with him because both manifestos are so opaque: Dis’s perspective is of course veiled in ambiguity and irony, while slogging through Tillford’s art-speak is a maddening challenge. It took me 3 reads to comprehend this sentence: “Philosophies conditioned by universally oriented political thought and action, or artistic practices interested in their intersections with the topologies of the political can do better than a Beckettian ethics and a militancy of incompletion self-medicating on fidelity to dead signifiers” [e-flux]

An interview with Sean Fennessy, who shoots gorgeous photos of the Australian Gold Coast and Dubai’s built environments and beaches. [Vice]

More Nazi-looted art drama. A California judge has dismissed a claim made by the family of Lilly Cassirer against the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The museum owns a Pissarro that Cassirer was forced to sell to a Nazi art appraiser. The judge said the case of the painting is an issue for Spanish courts to decide. [The New York Times]

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Friday Links: Reasons to Be Happy, or Confused

by Corinna Kirsch on March 20, 2015

Amazon has received Federal Aviation Administration approval to test drones outdoors. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon wants to test out delivery drones, available for 30-minute runs. [<re/code>]
Maple the dog listens to sad-boy acoustic guitar covers of pop songs. [Vine]
Sotheby’s is launching an auction of contemporary art by black artists, and will team up with Rapper Drake. Apparently, he draws a lot of inspiration from visual art. Drake’s contribution will be “choosing music to preview some of the art.” Yes, really. [The New York Times via @andrewrusseth]
“Kant is a moron.” [The Telegraph]
It’s Marcaron Day. Here is a map of all the places giving away free marcarons. [Grub Street]
Word nerds, get ready to shake your ink across and down. You have less than a week to prep for the 38th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Stamford, Connecticut. [American Crossword Puzzle Tournament]
“I received this very original tissue dispenser as a gift for my birthday (it happens), but sadly I am not into erotic art at all. It is an art piece, I’m selling it because I’m sure someone will appreciate it more than I do.” The statue dispenses tissues out of its asshole. [Craigslist]
A smart and informative article by Hrag Vartanian that looks at how Kuwait history and cultural production has influenced Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Read about Kuwait’s Golden Age, Arab Modernism and Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum, which took place earlier this week. [Hyperallergic]
In case you were wondering, you can track real-time emoji use on Twitter. [Emoji Tracker]
BitchCoin compared to historical models of patronage: “Will BitchCoin work, as a model of patronage? It doesn’t really matter. At this point in art where the dominant discussion tends to focus on art as a game for the rich, we’re willing to try anything else.” [VICE]
Twitter’s current punching bag: the New York Times real-estate article, “When New York Kids Help Find the Family Home.” [New York Times via @shaneferro]

This is just more evidence that the person running the NYT real estate section is attempting to foment the working-class revolution

— Shane (@shaneferro) March 20, 2015

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Friday Links: A Sad Day For No Bullshit Journalism

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on February 13, 2015

Zoo security drills prepare workers in the event of an escaped animal.

Media journalist and staunch New York Times defender David Carr died suddenly last night after collapsing in the newsroom. A video of one of his finer moments, grilling the journalistic stunt style of the VICE editors. “Just because you put on a safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do.” [YouTube]
The most honest, beautiful and horrifying account of addiction we’ve ever read, by David Carr. [The New York Times]
The best slide show we have ever seen. Zoo security drills for when animals escape. Incredible. [The Atlantic]
Record prices set for Ai Weiwei and Mark Bradford last night at Phillips London. [Baer Faxt]
Also, Christie’s has acquired Collectrium, an online database management system akin to ArtBinders that helps gallerists manage their inventory and track their sales. Wonder how Christie’s will use this software. [Baer Faxt]
I have no idea what the hell is going on with this booby performance costume at the #CAA conference, but I will be investigating further. [@nikkigphd on Twitter]
GIF artist Rebecca Mock has accused Diplo of ripping one of her GIFs to promote his new song. [Dazed Digital]
Weird. A listicle on the relationship details of art world power couples because Valentine’s Day. Many of those on the list are dead. Still, stories about people brought together by shared intellectual interests is better than the usual crap. [artnet News]

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Monday Links: Rain Man Assholes

by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on January 19, 2015

Karen Archey wonders why creative workers get a pass to be assholes. In a fictitious conversation she uses the term “Rain Man of Criticism” to describe one unnamed asshole people feel compelled to work with. May we never meet this person. [e-flux conversations]
Arts critics are suffering from increasingly strained relationships with the institutions they cover. Opera Australia has removed two critics from their comp list, including one from The Sydney Morning Herald after having received negative reviews. And Theatre Critic Joanne Kaufman from the Wall Street Journal was blacklisted by a press agent from receiving free tickets to show, after she admitted to bolting from certain shows at intermission. This podcast focuses on Denver’s Colorado Public Radio which announced last year it that it will no longer carry broadcasts of the Colorado Symphony. Apparently the main reason for this was editorial—the symphony wanted a lot more positive coverage on the radio. [WQXR via: Hyperallergic]
Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University senior who has become nationally known for her performance “Carry That Weight,” will be attending Tuesday’s State of the Union address. She was invited by New York State Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who supports the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act. [Jezebel]
This “Anime Tongue Tattoos” photo spread looks like a DIS photo shoot, but less weird. Very Internet-y, very Miley, and very many blue wigs. Pretty much, this photo spread crushes anything that once was alt into a pretty, plastic-coated display. [VICE]
China’s Ice-Sculpture Disneyland. [UPI]
In sci-fi movies and lit, female robots are always sexy pleasure machines. [The Guardian]
A dictionary of Harlem Renaissance slang circa 1938. Some terms still stick with us, like “hep cat” and “jive”; others, like “barbecue” (which means girlfriend), have gone the way of slang like “eat my shorts.” [Open Culture]
99% Invisible, a podcast about design, architecture and invisible activity has a great segment on chairs called “On the Edge of Your Seat.” These things are more dangerous than you think—silent killers! For those in the office today, use the posture tips. [99% Invisible]
“Civil rights” and “Martin Luther King Day” now brings up an American flag emoji for Chinese chat users, which is offensive. [The Verge]

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A Gift List for Art Christmas

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on December 3, 2014

December has come, which means it’s time to get a new calendar. The time has also come to spend your money prudently on art criticism books, or blow it on ostrich pillows. Cyber Monday may be over, but the Internet still offers an abundance of cheap art purchases.

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