The Walker Art Center's second-in-command resigned abruptly Thursday, . . .
[Ann] Bitter oversaw the Walker's construction project and its budget. She also helped the center shape a future schedule that tries to balance avant-garde events with more mainstream shows, performances and films. As examples of events with "very strong public appeal" she cited planned shows of Frida Kahlo paintings, Diane Arbus photos and "Picasso in America."
I went to Rebecca Horn: Bodylandscapes at the Hayward Gallery today. I was most taken with the early "body extension" works, many of which are in the Tate Modern collection. White Body Fan (1972), in particular, has a formal elegance and Finger Gloves (1972) are like the scratching of a real life Edward Scissorhands. According to the Guardian, Horn was confined to a bed for a year when she was younger, and many of her subsequent works involved "prosthetic bandages and padded body extensions," but there is also an element of magical realism in the works, which reminded me a bit of Lygia Clark's costumes and performances, although Horn does not have any physically participatory / "open systems" aspect to her work.
One of the things I liked best about The C5 Landscape Initiative at sf Camerawork Gallery is the imaginative and compelling variety of installation formats. Despite the heavy theoretical bent of their work and much of its peformative, ephemeral nature (see C5 and the Path More Or Less Taken), the installation is a model of what is possible when artists consider the gallery as an opportunity for presentation not a barrier.
Starting at the top of the stairs with Every Damn Route, a plot of all the GPS data from the three different projects of the initiative - and no, they did not carry the suitcases to the summits of Mount Shasta and Mount Fuji, but they did carry up the foam models sitting in them - there are a series of accessible installations of provocative work.
C5 researchers Gerri Wittig and Brett Stalbaum hold up photographic evidence of having found "the other path" of the Great Wall of China near the Pacific Crest Trail on Mount Shasta, California.
In preparation for this event CADRE’s SWITCH Journal has decided
to dedicate the issues leading up to the conference to address each of
the symposiums themes, the first of which being “Transvergence”.
As an introduction to both SWITCH Issue 20 and the Festival, CADRE Professor
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer chatted (literally) with ISEA Director Steve Dietz
and ISEA’s Academic Symposium Chair Joel Slayton.
It rated only a small headline when the news broke in December, but the more you look at the international symposium on electronic art coming to San Jose in 2006, the bigger it gets.
For one thing, this biennial gathering of the technology world's top artists, organized by the Netherlands-based Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA), meets only in cities with serious cultural and electronics chops -- Helsinki, Paris, Sydney, Montreal, Chicago, Manchester and Nagoya in past years. For another, San Jose's landing of this plum is planned as a catalyst for Silicon Valley's own biennial arts/technology festival that'll open here simultaneously and continue long after 2006 is history.
From: Pete Otis
To:
Date: May 10, 2005 10:53 AM
Subject: REFRESH! Histories of Media Art: Program and Registration
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Banff New Media Institute and in conjunction with the conference, Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz will curate The Art Formerly Known As New Media, an exhibition at the Walter Phillips Gallery (Sept. 17 - Oct. 23).
