A Comment column for The Guardian, taking its point of departure the Cultural Olympiad and Tino Seghal. NB I have nothing to do with the title and subtitle....
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Top Ten 2011
An unsolicited top ten, because I want to remember how much I adored these events:
1. Sarah Michelson, Devotion (The Kitchen, NY, January): unspeakably intense, pounding, repetitive; the solos by an insect-thin, white-clad Non Griffiths are seared in my mind, as well as the obsessional finale in which Eleanor Hullinan runs and leaps over and again into the arms of a stoic Jim Fletcher.
2. Kenny Goldsmith at the White House (Washington DC, May): click here – Kenny appears about eight and a half minutes in. I can’t get enough of this.
3. The return of installation art (Venice Biennial, June): Mike Nelson, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christoph Schlingensief, and the unexpected bonus of Ed Kienholz’s Roxy’s. Large scale immersive environments by some of the best.
4. The Pilgrim, The Tourist, The Flaneur (and the Worker) (Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, June): the most adventurous experiment in museum mediation I have seen to date. I confess I enjoyed the flaneur most: gliding round the galleries listening to prog rock, pouring rain and excerpts of film, I accessed works that had never spoken to me before, and in totally unexpected ways.
5. Björk’s Biophilia (Manchester International Festival, July): watching Björk belt out Thunderbolt in a vast red wig and sparkly blue gown, accompanied by huge musical contraptions, one of which buzzed with electricity, gave me shivers. May I, can I, or have I too often? Craving miracles...
6. Christoph Büchel’s Piccadilly Community Centre (London, July). Not a perfect work of art, but a perfectly controversial talking point, and the best art/life crossover I’ve seen in years – not to mention a delightfully encrypted fuck you to Cameron’s Big Society (if not also to Hauser and Wirth).
7. Jean Genet (Nottingham Contemporary, July): once again Alex Farquharson shows us how to mix documentary, historical footage and works of art. In Part I, Marc-Camille Chaimowicz ran wild with The Maids, all wallpaper, Giacommetti, Tillmans and domestic politesse. In Part II, Prisoners of Love, an unexpected group of artists circled around Genet’s anti-colonial involvements in Palestine and the Black Panthers.
8. La Carte d'après Nature, curated by Thomas Demand (Matthew Marks, NY, Sept): Ghirri, Magritte, van Elk and many others in an exquisite group show that strolls curiously around the garden of man-made takes on nature.
9. Boris Charmatz, Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro (Performa, NY, Nov). I have seen the cutting edge of performance and participation, and it is deft, sly, witty, durational, punchy, beautiful and moving.
10. Gatz, by ERS (McCarter Theater, Princeton, Dec): this time last year I would have said I was no fan of theatre. Then I caught ERS’s The Select in October and loved it; Gatz goes one better, becoming a meta-reflection on the mediums of literature and theatre. And to be reminded of great prose is a great way to end the year.
1. Sarah Michelson, Devotion (The Kitchen, NY, January): unspeakably intense, pounding, repetitive; the solos by an insect-thin, white-clad Non Griffiths are seared in my mind, as well as the obsessional finale in which Eleanor Hullinan runs and leaps over and again into the arms of a stoic Jim Fletcher.
2. Kenny Goldsmith at the White House (Washington DC, May): click here – Kenny appears about eight and a half minutes in. I can’t get enough of this.
3. The return of installation art (Venice Biennial, June): Mike Nelson, Thomas Hirschhorn, Christoph Schlingensief, and the unexpected bonus of Ed Kienholz’s Roxy’s. Large scale immersive environments by some of the best.
4. The Pilgrim, The Tourist, The Flaneur (and the Worker) (Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, June): the most adventurous experiment in museum mediation I have seen to date. I confess I enjoyed the flaneur most: gliding round the galleries listening to prog rock, pouring rain and excerpts of film, I accessed works that had never spoken to me before, and in totally unexpected ways.
5. Björk’s Biophilia (Manchester International Festival, July): watching Björk belt out Thunderbolt in a vast red wig and sparkly blue gown, accompanied by huge musical contraptions, one of which buzzed with electricity, gave me shivers. May I, can I, or have I too often? Craving miracles...
6. Christoph Büchel’s Piccadilly Community Centre (London, July). Not a perfect work of art, but a perfectly controversial talking point, and the best art/life crossover I’ve seen in years – not to mention a delightfully encrypted fuck you to Cameron’s Big Society (if not also to Hauser and Wirth).
7. Jean Genet (Nottingham Contemporary, July): once again Alex Farquharson shows us how to mix documentary, historical footage and works of art. In Part I, Marc-Camille Chaimowicz ran wild with The Maids, all wallpaper, Giacommetti, Tillmans and domestic politesse. In Part II, Prisoners of Love, an unexpected group of artists circled around Genet’s anti-colonial involvements in Palestine and the Black Panthers.
8. La Carte d'après Nature, curated by Thomas Demand (Matthew Marks, NY, Sept): Ghirri, Magritte, van Elk and many others in an exquisite group show that strolls curiously around the garden of man-made takes on nature.
9. Boris Charmatz, Musée de la Danse: Expo Zéro (Performa, NY, Nov). I have seen the cutting edge of performance and participation, and it is deft, sly, witty, durational, punchy, beautiful and moving.
10. Gatz, by ERS (McCarter Theater, Princeton, Dec): this time last year I would have said I was no fan of theatre. Then I caught ERS’s The Select in October and loved it; Gatz goes one better, becoming a meta-reflection on the mediums of literature and theatre. And to be reminded of great prose is a great way to end the year.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Unhappy Days in the Art World: De-skilling Theatre, Re-skilling Performance
An article on white cube vs black box performance, for the Brooklyn Rail's series of Al Held essays. It combines the outcome of last year's De-skilling seminars with my experiences co-curating Prelude.11 and being a judge of the Malcolm Award for Performa 11.Visual art performance has since its inception sought to de-skill theatre, and this places artists in a difficult position when they are now invited to produce performance in a black box/proscenium setting. A link to the article is here.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Post-Discipline? Contemporary Artists and Research
A new public seminar series, co-organised with Lindsay Caplan and Katherine Carl for the Center for the Humanities at CUNY Graduate Center.What can artistic approaches to research tell us about the relationship between history and its interpretation? And what creative lessons might artistic examples offer to researchers in the humanities? Does the restlessly hybrid character of these artistic endeavours provide a model for post-disciplinary research?
30 September - Walid Raad
28 October - Andrea Geyer
9 December - Trevor Paglen
Spring dates tbc - Jill Magid, Eyal Weisman and Antoni Muntadas
Reading and registration required - please sign up here.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Prelude.11
Save the date! I'm co-curating this year's Prelude.11 festival at the Martin Segal Theatre Center at CUNY Graduate Center, together with Rob Marcato (Producer, Signature Theatre) and Helen Shaw (Theatre Critic, Time Out). I have brought in the following projects: Jackson Pollock Bar (Joseph Beuys in America), Nina Beier (Complete Works, performed by Gus Solomons Jr), Rob Fitterman, Donelle Woolford and Will Holder (the latter three grouped as Extreme Appropriation). 12-14 October, 4-10pm daily, with a closing party on Friday 14 October at the Gershwin Hotel.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Venice Review in Artforum
A long, diplomatic review of IllumiNATIONS, the main exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale, in the September 2011 issue of Artforum.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Two catalogue essays for Venice
(1) 'And That is What Happened Here': an experimental essay comprising interviews with the participants of Hirschhorn's Bijlmer-Spinoza Festival (Amsterdam, 2009), published to accompany Hirschhorn's Crystal of Resistance installation in the Swiss Pavilion at Venice. This was done in great haste so there are many flaws; more work should have been done looking at ethnographic field studies before embarking on this text.
(2) 'Zones of Indifferentiation': an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Artificial Hells, focusing on the work of Collective Actions Group. Published to accompany the presentation of Andrey Monastyrsky in the Russian pavilion at Venice, curated by Boris Groys.
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