January 31, 2011

CAA's 99th Annual Conference


At CAA's 99th Annual Conference in New York from February 9-12, 2011, the ARTspace Media Lounge presents a roster of innovative video programming, with selections made by renowned artists, professors, and curators specializing in new media; they are shown on a continuous loop during the conference, featuring a different hour-long program each day.
An outstanding program is lined up for New York, featuring videos assembled by nine curators, including Boshko Boskovic, Alexander Campos, David Familian, Claudia Hart, Martha Kirszenbaum, Karen Moss, Aily Nash, Debra Riley Parr, and Catherine Sullivan. The framework for the program can best be described by the title chosen by the organizers, Band of Outsiders, the irresistible title of Jean Luc Godard’s 1964 film, which prompts the notion of a collective challenging of boundaries. The goal is to reflect the independent and adventurous mettle that has always characterized art production in New York City.
The video program Not So Distant Memory, curated by Boshko Boskovic, comprises of an hour-long presentation of video works from the territory of what used to be Yugoslavia. The approach is topographical and takes as a starting point remembrance of a place that has expired in history. The process is a simple one: connecting the dots of national groups that once cohabited within a construct through the basis of video art. Aesthetics are politics and in featuring artworks from ex-Yugoslav republics and provinces (Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia) there is a danger that the exhibition be perceived as an excessively sentimental yearning to return to a past period that once existed, namely The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1943-1992). One is fully aware that returning to the past is an irrecoverable process and the aim of this presentation is to showcase the production of recent artworks that happen to be framed upon a territory that once existed.
The works contain a multitude of voices and perspectives: from the performative and more politically engaged to the lyrical and humorous. The focus is not on developing an overarching theme or conclusion yet experiencing works from a particular region that is often neglected or esentialised by the western contemporary art world.
Participating artists in the exhibition are: Danilo Prnjat (Montenegro), Marija Djordjevic (Serbia), Renata Poljak (Croatia), Boris Glamocanin & Sandra Dukic (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Mladen Miljanovic (Bosna & Hercegovina), Borjana Mrdja (Bosna & Hercegovina), Leban-Kleindienst (Slovenia), Alban Muja (Kosovo), Zoran Poposki (Macedonia).

January 20, 2011

Interview

"Citizens should actively be involved in decision-making about what their surroundings should look like. They have the right to use and create public space. In the widest sense, citizens have the right to the city - to live and to produce public urban space through working and living in the city. The city is not just a collection of buildings, but is rather a result of the interaction between the citizens.
I want to see the city as a space of radical democracy, where citizens of every level would be involved in making decisions. Creating opportunities for dialogue between different social groups at every level. That means opening up public space into a place for dialogue and debate, as well as space for the representation of different social groups.
My thesis is that art necessarily requires public space. Art is by its nature dialogic - it addresses the other in order to engage into a process of communication and exchange."

More from the interview at Zurnal MK (in Macedonian).

January 08, 2011

Public Interfaces

Conference and PhD workshops | 12-14 January 2011 | Aarhus University, Denmark.


The Public Interfaces conference and Ph.D. workshop brings together researchers from
Aarhus University, University of Plymouth, and guests to address the broad theme of Public Interfaces. It is organised by the Centre for Digital Urban Living (DUL), Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC), and Dept. of Aesthetic Studies, Aarhus University.

Emerging from DUL and DARC's ongoing research around interface criticism, the aim is to broaden issues to encompass the development of urban interfaces, and the changing concept of the 'public'.

The following questions act as points of departure:
Whilst experimentation and developments in the culture of free software reflects emergent and self-organizing public actions, how does this modify our understanding of public interfaces? Can the public interface be used as a useful concept for understanding changing relations between public and private realms within other fields? Does the public interface offer a way of further examining relational aesthetics, the cultural regeneration agenda and public art? Does the public interface provide new understandings of the relationship between creative production and the free market sphere? How does the possible dissolution of the public and private spheres relate to bio politics and contemporary forms of power? Does the public interface suggest new borders or even the dissolution of borders between the public and private, humans and machines, the centre and periphery?

The conference and workshop are organised into three thematic strands: Art as public interface; The public interfaces of urban space; The public interface and capital.

Speakers: Merete Carlson (DK), Phil Ellis (UK), Christian Rhein (DE), Nina Valkanova (BG/ES), Tobias Ebsen (DK), Kevin Carter (UK), Thomas Bjørnsten Kristensen (DK), Andrew Prior (UK), Morten Riis (DK), Nina Gram (DK), Lars Bo Løfgreen (DK), Robert Jackson (UK), Magda Tyzlik-Carver (UK/PL), Tatiana Bazzichielli (IT/DK), Jacob Lund (DK), Malcolm Miles (UK), Morten Breinbjerg (DK), Brett Bloom (US/DK), Rui Guerra (NL/PT), Jørgen Bang (DK), Martin Brynskov (DK), Robert Brown (UK/US), Lone Koefoed Hansen (DK), Zoran Poposki (Rep. of Macedonia), Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK), Søren Pold (DK), Joasia Krysa (PL/UK), Geoff Cox (UK/DK), Mikkel Bolt (DK).

Organisers:Jacob Lund (DK), Geoff Cox (UK/DK), Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK).

January 05, 2011

MYSELF: Contemporary Self-Portraiture

Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery | University of Nevada, Reno | Art Dept. MS 224 |1664 N. Virginia St | Reno, NV 89557 | www.unr.edu/art



MYSELF: A 66-person Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraiture
Curated by Marjorie Vecchio, PhD
Exhibitions Run: Tuesday, January 18 – Friday, February 18, 2011

From Northern Nevada to all corners in America - - from Macedonia and Greece, to Sweden and French Canada, this large survey-style exhibition presents sixty-six artists, including one collaboration, exploring the theme of self-portraiture. Perhaps considered just the folly of indulgent navel-gazing, the self-portrait continues to be important and interesting because it not only provides varied perspectives of the artist looking back on the self in circumstance, but rather also provides cultural, political and social insight into the time period and conditions under which the art was made. In a growing globalization, how we reflect the times we live in is subject matter that crosses the unsteady boundaries of nation, race, gender, religion, political affiliation, age, class, etc. The exhibition demonstrates that humor, pop culture, health, irony, history, intellectual debates, idealism and story-telling are ever-present undertones to how artists express themselves, whether they use self-portraiture as rare device, or as regular all-encompassing investigative tool.

All media, regardless of size, are in the exhibition, including printmaking, fiber, painting, drawing, photography, animation, performance, sticker art, video, sculpture and interdisciplinary media.

MYSELF’s 72-page catalogue is available with co-essay conversation between artist writers Joy Garnett and Mira Schor. Preface by Howard Rosenberg, University of Nevada, Reno Art Department Chair.

Artist List: Funda Zeynep Ayguler, Marie Bergstedt, Megan Berner, Emma Bee Bernstein, Pam Brekas, Chris Carnel, Jean Marie Casbarian, Craig Cully, Megan Cump, Joe DeLappe, Michael Eade, Peter Emerick, Joy Episalla, Elise Gardella, Chantal Gervais, Alex Gingrow, Jennifer Graham, Cynthia Greig, Amy Guidry, Jen P. Harris, Rosi Hayes, Ahren Hertel, Aimee Hertog, Nene Humphrey, Suzanne Joelson, Josh Jordan, Jiyeon Kim, Eunkang Koh, Kate Kretz, Larry Lee and Jason Dunda, Julie Lequin, Elizabeth Leister, Teryn Loebs, Holly Lynton, Megan Malone, Valerie Margolis, Lily McElroy, Alan Mevis, Rob Millard-Mendez, Elizabeth Morisette, John Orth, Kathryn Pannepacker, Maria Paschalidou, Zoran Poposki, Robert Prichard, Clifford Pun, Letitia Quesenberry, Carol Radsprecher, Erin Riley, Ariana Page Russell, Susannah Sayler, Matthew Schlagbaum, Tim Sharman, Ebenezer Singh, Jackie Skrzynski, John Steck Jr., Joshua Stern, Robin Tewes, Kristine Thompson, Clare Thornton, Christina Renfer Vogel, Deborah Wasserman, Jessica Watson, Orion Wertz, Tammy Wofsey.