Polydrain

Cascando

Το Cascando είναι μουσικός όρος που δηλώνει την επιβράδυνση του ρυθμού και την ταυτόχρονη μείωση της έντασης. Αυτή η ερμηνευτική εξέλιξη συνήθως, προϊδεάζει τον ακροατή για το επερχόμενο τέλος. Στο Cascando, ένα ραδιοφωνικό θεατρικό του Σάμουελ Μπέκετ που γράφτηκε το 1961 ο αφηγητής προσπαθεί να τελειώσει μια ιστορία ή για την ακρίβεια «να βρει την ιστορία που τελειώνει όλες της ιστορίες». Η ολοκλήρωση συνεχώς ματαιώνεται. Το έργο δεν τελειώνει, απλώς σταματά.

Κωστής Βελώνης, Απόστολος Γεωργίου, Γιώργος Γυπαράκης, Απόστολος Ντελάκος, Μαρία Παπαδημητρίου, Αλέξανδρος Ψυχούλης 

25 Ιουνίου - 15 Σεπτεμβρίου
CASK gallery, Λάρισα 

What Models Can Do—A Short History of the Architectural Model in Contemporary Art

Charles Simonds, Floating Cities, 2014 (founded 1972). Wood, plastic, plaster, 115 parts, various sizes. © 2014 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

In the field of architecture and urban planning, the three-dimensional architectural model – on a reduced scale -- continues to function as a tool when communicating planned or realised architecture. The model can efficiently provide information about larger spatial contexts, which are either experienced very differently in their original dimensions or may even be impossible to experience at all. Through its reduction in size, the model also facilitates a reduction in spatial complexity. Suddenly, it is possible to grasp things at a glance that can only be understood in their original size through the time-consuming process of a physical inspection.

It is noticeable that contemporary art frequently adopts the architectural and urban model, removing it from its tightly framed functional context, adapting its phenomenological qualities and giving it a fresh function in the context of artistic questions. In the conceptually dominated art of the last 40 years, the architectural model is opened up poetically and employed in a metaphorical and theatrical fashion. Another important aspect in this context is the mysterious aura of the miniature (Gaston Bachelard), which the eye can penetrate – without the body, so to speak, but without forgetting the physical experience.

On the one hand, reference to the architectural model helps to develop issues concerning the sculpture; on the other hand, the architectural model can serve – precisely because of its interim state between concept and realisation – as an instrument of criticism and utopia. It is this not-only-but-also, this simultaneity of direct sensory presence and yet suggestive distance to the viewer’s sphere of experience, which constitutes the fascination of the model.

The exhibition writes a brief history of the architectural model in contemporary art. It begins with the legendary model by Charles Simonds, covers the 1990s with Ludger Gerdes, Hermann Pitz and Thomas Schütte, and weaves the thread further, up to the present day, with Alicia Framis, Hinrich Sachs and Carlos Garaicoa.

Participating artists: Absalon, Michael Ashkin, Thomas Bayrle, Peter Downsbrough, Jean-Pascal Flavien, Alicia Framis, Carlos Garaicoa, Ludger Gerdes, Christian Haake, Gabu Heindl & Drehli Robnik, Matthew Day Jackson, Friederike Klotz, Langlands & Bell, Rita McBride, Isa Melsheimer, Stephan Mörsch, Sirous Namazi, Hermann Pitz, Hinrich Sachs, Michel Sauer, Thomas Schütte, Laurie Simmons & Peter Wheelwright, Charles Simonds, Stephen Willats, Elizabeth Wright und Yin Xiuzhen.

June 29–October 2014

Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen

www.mgk-siegen.de

Untitled

Tonight i'm eating stars

and yer not gonna stop me

travelin through bars
with glitter on my stockings

My body parts are shimmerin

as i move through my own galaxy

My high heels kick up moondust

I got Saturn's rings for jewelry

Yeh, i know that times are hard

and you got yer shovel waiting on me
But tonight i'm eating stars
so you can shove yer goddamn gravity

The Sun fell down my pants

and I'm gonna dance till Gabriel blows

Search all night long till i find myself

a couple of celestial bodies

Go on you can dig yer hole

cuz tomorrow you might catch me

But tonight I'm eatin stars

and mother -fucker you can't touch me.

Poem included in the text of Nancy Scheper-Hughes “The genocidal continuum:peace -time crimes”, Power and Self , Cambridge University Press, 2002. Street Poet from Baltimore

Tuiles Bisch

Tuiles Bisch, 1967

Labor as a Tulip

Labor as a tulip
arrays its flame, nu
form, as the bulb-star,
interred, divines its ore

surging the gulf
rooting it into
appalled memento
pulsing will.

Leaf-blades score the heap.
Other wounds—penetralia—
other worlds, cries, far.
Filaments, simples

emblazoning the rei,
rebus of grief.
Unslumbering terra
premising her kill.

Karen Volkman, 2014

The Brancusi Effect

Constantin Brancusi, Le Coq, 1924-1925, Courtesy Züricher Kunstgesellschaft, Schenkung Carola Giedion-Welcker, 2011, © Silke Otto-Knapp, Courtesy greengrassi, London. Foto: Marcus Leith

The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) is numbered among the 20th century’s most influential artists. With his considerations of the way that pedestal and presented work relate to each other he launched a reorientation of the relationship between object, viewer and space. This had a decisive influence on minimal art and the aesthetic of the installation as a whole.

Moreover, Brancusi’s work is seen as the initial point of a reflection on the artwork’s historical and institutional positioning. The exhibition The Brancusi Effect takes this potential into account as well as the strongly documentary aspect implicit in Brancusi’s artistic approach, which was expressed in countless photographic images of installations taken in his studio. The exhibition presents original photographic material together with selected positions of contemporary art that reference Brancusi, and so creates an imposing spatial installation comprising various sculptures that reflect the recent currency of the sculptural within contemporary art.

Photographs of Brancusi in his studio in the Impasse Rosin in Paris, showcase how he used installative arrangements to present his works as a spatially unified work of art. Brancusi moreover also personally photographed individual works, in order to translate the special aura of his sculptures into the medium of photography. The loan from the Kunsthaus Zurich provides a fascinating insight into the thinking and the production methods of this artist, who, between tradition and modernity, created a work of singularity within the European avant-garde.

Further insight into the work of Brancusi can be drawn from the work Les 58 numéros flotents, an unwilling collaborative work between Brancusi, the Japanese photographer Soichi Sunami and the Italian publisher Giovanni Scheiwiller, directed both formally and conceptually by Marcel Duchamp’s invisible hand. The five photographs conclude the operation started by Duchamp on Brancusi’s work which began with the installation at Brummer Gallery in 1933 and which completely overturned the reading of the work and paved the way for its future, American perception. Alessio delli Castelli’s work on these objects, oscillating between documents and works of art, is presented in the catalogue alongside Paola Mola’s original studies on the subject.

The contemporary positions in the exhibition are characterised by an enormous heterogeneity, but share an interest in the relationship between work and pedestal, work and space and the modular principle, exemplified in one of Brancusi’s most famous works Endless Column. The combination of different materials, the coexistence of different volumes and the dissolution of the idea of a supporting pedestal in favour of an integral sculptural component, also characterise the selected works by international artists.

An Te Liu transforms Styrofoam parts from transport packaging of hi-fi equipment or household appliances into elegant modular bronze sculptures. In Ok Ok Ok Ok Ok, Sofia Hultén, spans a floor-to-ceiling filigree column out of old car jacks. The works by Koenraad Dedobbeleer muddle up the perception of the relationship between objects and their appearance; the works appear both as sculpture and as pedestal of a sculpture. Ute Müller in turn combines found materials with organically shaped sculptures into dense sculptural arrangements.

The exciting interior and exterior insights arising out of this coexistence of different sculptural positions, in the glass pavilion of Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, in essence once more serve to emphasize the currency of Brancusi.

Artists: Saâdane Afif, Wilfrid Almendra, Nina Beier, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Constantin Brancusi, André Cadere, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Alessio delli Castelli, Thea Djordjadze, Paulien Föllings, Isa Genzken, Konstantin Grcic, Jürgen Mayer H., Sofia Hultén, Haraldur Jónsson, An Te Liu, Josephine Meckseper, Ute Müller, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Shahryar Nashat, Olaf Nicolai, Odilon Pain, Luiz Roque, Rudi Stanzel.

Curators: Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen

http://arhitectura-1906.ro/2014/06/the-brancusi-effect-126-219-2014-kunsthalle-wien-karlsplatz/

“Bobby, Ζαμβέζης, Darling, Τσάρ, Liggie, Kittie and Fanny”

Artists: Dirk Bell, Sarah Crowner, Rallou Panagiotou, Charlotte Posenenske, Georgia Sagri, Kostis Velonis and special guest. A Summer Show: “Bobby, Ζαμβέζης, Darling, Τσάρ, Liggie, Kittie and Fanny”Andreas Melas & Helena Papadopoulos Gallery

"This is Not My Beautiful House" shots

Rural Management, 2014 

Tribune Leading to the Ramp and Ramp Leading to the Tribune, 2014 

How One Can Think Freely in the Shadow of a Temple, 2008 

http://www.kunsthalleathena.org

Photo by Stathis Mamalakis

Proto Doric Column

Proto Doric Column, at the entrance to a tomb, Beni Hasan, Egypt, The Bridgeman Art Library

Publisher Places a Politically Correct Warning Label on Kant’s Critiques

Most times when I hear someone on a tear about the dangers of “political correctness” I roll  my eyes and move on. So many such complaints involve ire at being held to standards of basic human decency, say, or having to share resources, opportunities, or public spaces. But there are many exceptions, when the so-called “PC” impulse to broaden inclusivity and soften offense produces monsters of condescending paternalism. Take the above omnibus edition of “Kant’s Critiques” printed by Wilder Publications in 2008. The publisher, with either kind but painfully obtuse motives, or with an eye toward pre-empting some kind of legal blowback, has seen fit to include a disclaimer at the bottom of the title page:

This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

Where to begin? First, we must point out Wilder Publications’ strange certainty that a hypothetical Kant of today would express his ideas in tolerant and liberal language. The supposition has the effect of patronizing the dead philosopher and of absolving him of any responsibility for his blind spots and prejudices, assuming that he meant well but was simply a blinkered and unfortunate “product” of his time. But who’s to say that Kant didn’t damn well mean his comments that offend our sensibilities today, and wouldn’t still mean them now were he somehow resurrected and forced to update his major works? Moreover, why assume that all current readers of Kant do not share his more repugnant views? Secondly, who is this editionfor? Philosopher Brian Leiter, who brought this to our attention, humorously titles it “Kant’s 3 Critiques—rated PG-13.” One would hope that any young person precocious enough to read Kant would have the ability to recognize historical context and to approach critically statements that sound unethical, bigoted, or scientifically dated to her modern ears. One would hope parents buying Kant for their kids could do the same without chiding from publishers.

None of this is to say that there aren’t substantive reasons to examine and critique the prejudicial assumptions and biases of classical philosophers. A great many recent scholars have done exactly that. In her Philosophy of Science and Race, for example, Naomi Zack observes that “according to contemporary standards, both [Hume and Kant] were virulent white supremacists.” Yet she also analyzes the problems with applying “contemporary standards” to their systems of thought, which were not necessarily racist in the sense we mean so much as “racialist,” dependent on an “ontology of human races, which underlay Hume and Kant’s value judgments about what they thought were racial differences” (an ontology, it’s worth noting, that produced systemic and institutional racism). Zack respects the vast gulf that separates our judgments from those of the past while still holding the philosophers accountable for contradictions and inconsistencies in their thought that are clearly the products of willful ignorance, chauvinism, and unexamined bias. An informed historical approach allows us to see how books are not simply “products of their time” but are situated in networks of knowledge and ideology that shaped their authors’ assumptions and continue to shape our own—ideologies that persist into the present and cannot and should not be papered over or easily explained away with skittish warning labels and didactic lectures about how much things have changed. In a great many ways of course, they have. And in some significant others, they simply haven’t. To pretend otherwise for the sake of the children is disingenuous and does a grave disservice to both author and reader.

Text by Josh Jones

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/03/kants-3-critiques.html