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The Crowd (0-infinity) at Espace d'Art Contemporain La Tôlerie

Ceci Moss | Fri May 9th, 2008 5:01 a.m.

Artists: Anna Adahl (Sweden), Maurizio Cattelan (Italy), Annika Eriksson (Sweden), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Cuba, USA), Jiri Kovanda (Czech Republic), Kristof Kintera (Czech Republic), Nicolas Moulin (France), Roman Ondàk (Slovaquia), Claude Rutault (France), Laure Tixier (France), Marie Voignier (France), William Wegman (USA)

Curated by Guillaume Désanges, assisted by Mélanie Mermod (Work Method)

Espace d'Art Contemporain La Tôlerie
May 6th to July 25th 2008

In the lineage of works by Elias Canetti, the motif of the crowd as an echo of the political notion of community can extend to the history of forms. Conceptually, the crowd results from the paradoxical formation of a "collective individuality," a physical gathering of units momentarily sharing a common goal. As a group capable of reaching the "innumerable," the crowd fascinates as much as it frightens through its physical monstrosity and immeasurable power. From a more formal point of view, the crowd's motif refers to the representation of a whole as a sum of specific elements, therefore to the idea of fractals. It also relates to the ornamental tradition of the grotesque, as a chaotic succession that gives a form of order to disorder. An investigation of the crowd, the mass, or the multitude cannot be made without considering the necessary counterpoint: absence, void, the isolated individual facing the world, and his/her relationship to otherness and the group. Therein lies the first stage in the constitution of a community. From this perspective, The Crowd (0-infinity) is constructed according to a continuous script that leads from the one to the multiple.

The first chapter of this evolving exhibition project voluntarily excludes any representation of human crowds. It approaches this complex theme in an abstract, paradoxical manner. The choice of the art works is more sensory than illustrative, more formal than figurative, more ...

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Originally posted on e-flux shows :: rss by Rhizome

New York, New York

Rhizome | Fri May 9th, 2008 8 a.m.

New York City is often cited as an international arts capital, to the extent that curatorial efforts and press coverage of artists and shows here often overshadow work made elsewhere. (A fact of which Rhizome tries to be aware in covering international arts events.) But there are plenty of talented artists looking to share the spotlight in the rest of New York state, and the public exhibition "Plugged In" highlights several working in new media. Of the fifteen artists participating in the show (Greg Lock, Mark Gregory, Giorgio Handman, Kathe Izzo, Ingrid Ludt, Jesse Matulis, Josh Pelletier, Jillian McDonald, Michael Oatman, Fernando Orellana, Jonathan Osofsky + Jasdeep Gosal, Christine Sciulli, Bart Woodstrup + Chip Fasciana, and Bryan Zanisnik), only three hail from the Big Apple, while the rest of this diverse bunch reside in New Paltz, Albany, Cohoes, Troy, and Hudson, New York. From May 17th-31st, their work will be viewable in open spaces and non-arts venues along Warren Street, Hudson's main thoroughfare. Installing these projects as public art presents a unique challenge, given that most of them are electronic and highly conceptual. Curator Melissa Stafford selected the artists based on their "drive to bring about shifts in our perception of the union [between science and the humanities] and a general desire to take us by surprise." It seems safe to assume that a robot invasion of Main Street, USA is the kind of endeavor that turns a few heads. Kudos to Hudson to opening the dialogue to make new media art a part of the locals' everyday experience. - Marisa Olson

Image Credit: Fernando Orellana, Sleep Waking, 2008

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Psychoactive Wallpapers (2008) by Roglok

Ceci Moss | Fri May 9th, 2008 12:23 p.m.

Psychoactive Wallpapers (2008) by Roglok

"Welcome to my jazzy collection of Psychoactive Wallpapers. My aim in this project is to generate static and animated .gif images with a low filesize that provide interesting visual effects. I am inspired by the Structural Film movement of the 60's and 70's as well as stereographic 3d images and early webdesign."

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See Me, Hear Me: A/V Circa 2008

Ceci Moss | Fri May 9th, 2008 12:23 p.m.

American Music Center recently published a new issue of their web journal NewMusicBox, titled "See Me, Hear Me: A/V Circa 2008," which attempts to take stock of current audio/visual practice. Towards this end, the issue features four lengthy interviews with the A/V artists Scott Arford, Betsey Biggs, R. Luke DuBois, and the duo LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus). While the editors admit the difficulty in establishing an overarching conclusion given the diversity of the practitioners interviewed, they do underscore the increasing presence and significance of "musical art" following the democratization of technology and tools. - Ceci Moss

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A Chorus Line

Ceci Moss | Fri May 9th, 2008 3:14 p.m.

After its March premiere at the Dark Fair, Wordless Chorus will convene for the second time this Saturday evening at New York's Canada Gallery. Composed by artist Brian Belott and dancer Larissa Velez, the piece involves the participation of over 25 choreographed members howling, singing, and grunting nonsensical verse while wielding props such as chattering teeth and batons. Lounge music is cited as an inspiration for the project, an unsurprising fact considering Belott's love for kitsch and distinct sense of humor, which recalls the media savvy and subversive wit of Michael Smith paired with a Dada-inspired penchant for the absurd. While, evidently, the Wordless Chorus is an event that needs to be seen to be believed, those unable to attend can pick up a limited-edition vinyl record of the ensemble's performance later this year from Grey Ghost Press. - Ceci Moss

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Free time this weekend?

Ceci Moss | Fri May 9th, 2008 3:21 p.m.

Why not fill it with 1 or more of 3 Rhizome-related activities?

1) Attend Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible, Trevor Paglen's talk at the New Museum tonight at 7:30pm

2) Buy tickets for the Rhizome Benefit.

3) For our members all over the world: view and vote on Rhizome Commissions. Every year, our community selects two of our seven commissions. Cast your votes today!

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PopTube

Rhizome | Mon May 12th, 2008 8 a.m.

Internet video site YouTube needs no introduction. Its status as both a branded channel and a medium in its own right has redefined "new media" on both sides of the art and corporate entertainment divide. But most of its content resides somewhere in between, and its currency lies in the vernacular nature of the items posted there--to the extent that the memes incubated on YouTube are trickling down into the language of contemporary artists' work and, in turn, re-emerging on the site. This is the feeding cycle that has long defined pop art, and on May 13th, three artists will make their YouTube consumption conspicuous in an event at The Kitchen, the New York-based organization famous for supporting risk-taking media and performance work. "Artists Using YouTube" is organized by curator and critic Rachel Greene and will feature artists Sue de Beer, Matthew Higgs, and Matthew Ronay--each of whom is well-known for incorporating mainstream cultural phenomena into their work--presenting their favorite YouTube clips, whether they've been a source of influence or productive distraction. - Marisa Olson

Sue de Beer, Annika Line Trust (Psychedelic Light), 2006 (detail)

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Site Specific

ed halter | Mon May 12th, 2008 4:20 p.m.

Replacing the white cube with an off-white browser frame, Harm van den Dorpel's Club Internet provides an ingenious, minimally-invasive strategy for the online presentation of a gallery-style group show. Eschewing the thumbnail and commentary of surfing clubs and art blogs, van den Dorpel offers instead a thin toolbar top-border that allows the reader to cycle through full pages by the 24 artists assembled for Club Internet's inaugural show, "First Selection," running until June 14. The exhibit itself has a zeitgeisty greatest-hits quality; some of the work on display by the likes of Paul Slocum, Guthrie Lonergan, Jodi and Oliver Laric will be already familiar to Rhizome readers. But the selection serves as an excellent showcase for Club Internet's full-screen format, as many of the works require the entire browser frame, and in some cases, their native domain name displayed for full effect, and none go deeper than a single page each. The disorientingly distended jpegs of Constant Dullart's blown up balloon and blown up explosion, or the similarly large-scale, low-res flash animation of Damon Zucconi's Form Over Communication (Do not go gentle into that good night), for example, would be difficult to translate to a bite-sized blog post--likewise Michael Guidetti's glorious full-page text-and-image jumbles. Similarly, works like Thomas Traum's walking and neon, Petra Cortright's . . ..~ <[-/=^=-]>~.. . ., and van den Dorpel's own Sleepwalker I live up to their quasi-cinematic potential when allowed to flourish in full frame. -- Ed Halter

Image is an excerpt from Harm Van Den Dorpel's Sleepwalker I, 2007.

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chris fortescue

Ceci Moss | Tue May 13th, 2008 10:17 a.m.

chris fortescue's 'rectified searches' project "explores how image proliferation on the internet impacts contemporary photographic image production." see more here.

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Originally posted on i heart photograph by Rhizome

Reading Between the Lines

Marisa Olson | Tue May 13th, 2008 10:59 a.m.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes spam emails contain the most interesting images? In an effort to encrypt their messages, thus bypassing inbox filters, many spammers will convert their text to an image format, and the pixellated camouflage of these images is very often very beautiful. This junk mail camo finds its origin in what artist Elizabeth Duffy calls "analog mail." She and the team at Purgatory Pie Press sifted through their mail to collect envelopes containing security patterns, images of which they've subsequently published in a hand-made book called Enclosure Exposure: Data Protection Patterning. The piece is the newest in PPP's "InstaBook" subscription series of DIY, folded, single-sheet books. There's something about the automation, the serialization, and the repetition of these patterns and even this book itself that make the project intriguing. The patterns are an institutionalized veil between what is and isn't meant to be seen, and like visually-encrypted spam messages, the banality of their simple, mostly monochromatic, repeated lines and overlapping patterns adds up to something much more formally interesting. - Marisa Olson

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