State of Art - A Conversation Between G.H. Hovagimyan and Mark Cooley, conducted through electronic mail - January 2008.

MC: Over the years, you’ve had experiences with various authorities that have tried in one way or another to censor your work. I’m interested if you could identify and comment on particular sites of censorship that exist in and around Art institutions and identify some the taboos that tend to generate negative responses from potential censors (curators, board members, sponsors, politicians, and other interested parties). Continue reading

States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba - Iván Capote, Yoan Capote, Jeanette Chávez, Diana Fonseca, Wilfredo Prieto and Lázaro Saavedra :: January 23 - March 22, 2008 :: Iniva, Rivington Place, London :: Curated by Gerardo Mosquera and Cylena Simonds.

States of Exchange: Artists from Cuba provides a dynamic and thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of economic and information exchange in contemporary Cuba. At a time when borderless communication is assumed to be the global norm, Cuba is a country caught in flux. Continue reading

Cadre/Montalvo Artist Research Lecture Series in collaboration with ZERO1 presents: FUSE: conversation, a series of lectures by renowned artists addressing some of the most pertinent issues of our time including globalization, sustainability, censorship, human rights, social responsibility, human centered design and the next generation of cultural production.

September: 6th - The Center for Land Use Interpretation :: 14th - Red 76 :: 20 - Eddo Stern* :: October: 3rd - Graffiti Research Laboratory :: 12th - Kevin and Jennifer McCoy :: 18th - Natalie Jeremijenko :: 23rd - Rosina Gomez-Baeze Tinture** :: 26th - Mongrel. Continue reading

by Jane Crayton aka JanedaPain

“Art as crime; crime as art.” Hakim Bey

One of the most relevant statements made about art by a man who walked the line of expressionism. Hakim Bey, did he see the future, or did he contemplate the past, a combination of both I would guess.

The word guerrilla is a word of Spanish descent (guerra, meaning war) first used to describe the Spanish-Portuguese guerrilleros (insurgents). Guerrilleros have existed through out time often in defense of some wrongs imposed to a group of less represented and defended peoples. Continue reading

The Current Pulse of the World

Emergency Room at PS1/MOMA - ER NYC :: February 8 - March 19, 2007 :: Opening Reception: February 11, 2007 12-6pm :: Raphaele Shirley, Lee Wells, and Paul Middendorf exhibit new collaborative works and installations.

Everyday there are topics which seem ignored or under represented by the media, such as the war, genocide, global warming and more. It is important to keep finding clues and links which would reveal new evidences on the reality we are living in. Continue reading

WE WILL NOT BE SILENT

Is It True, JetBlue? by Naeem Mohaiemen

“The artist says, “It’s not my business.” Then whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the business of the most important issues in the world to the people who run the country? How stupid can we be?” [Howard Zinn, Talk @ Massachusetts College of Art, October 10, 2001]

Is It True Jet Blue? JFK? TSA? A rhetorical question that leads to a tautology. Yes, of course people racially profile the darker masses while whipping up a pervasive fear in the name of “national security.” Paranoia is so essential to running the modern state, other navigation tools seem permanently broken. Continue reading

Call for Participation

This summer and fall you are invited to contribute to the creation of an open-access publishing house, a Free Press, to be launched at Roda Sten contemporary art center in Goteborg, Sweden. A project of artist Sal Randolph, Free Press will accept all kinds of writing from the public; contributions in any language can be as short as a single word or as long as an encyclopedia and can include manifestos, statements, documentations, studies, stories, recipes, poems and whatever you can imagine. Continue reading

“From the (below) list it will be evident that the kind of practices that we are talking about range from comics to high theory, with software, web-based work, radio, documentary filmmaking, and self-published broadsheets in between. Crucially, each of these might involve either a level of sociality in the production of cultural processes or a willingness to engage with a discursive register (and sometimes both). This unties art and cultural work from decorative or propagandist demands and enables it to claim a space for forms that are generative of questions, thought, reflection and communitas.” — Monica Narula, Raqs Media Collective

A Place Like This, A Time Like Now: Sometimes it feels like things are beginning to get really interesting. We imagine that Calcutta in the 1940s and ‘60s (or in the 1880s) and Bombay in the 1920s and ‘50s or Delhi in the 1850s and (briefly) in the 1970s, might have been really rewarding times and places to live in. We have a sense that Delhi, today, in the first decade of our young century, is again showings signs of quickening to the possibilities of a new life. Continue reading

Intervention by Johannesburg Artist Jose Ferreira

As covered by Carine Zaayman on Artthrob, the Very Real Time project launched its second phase at the Drill Hall (Point Blank Gallery, downtown Jozi) this past weekend, hosting, “Two panels of selected speakers… chaired by Gregg Smith and …an intervention by Johannesburg based artist, Jose Ferreira.”

This work consists of a series of journeys and a garment. Appearing to be an ordinary overall, it unfolds and translates into various forms, provoking unusual relationships. It is at once a vessel for shelter, a protective unit, and gatherer of ephemera. Â…The focal point of the work is to extricate new readings of social interactions in this urban context that may have become accepted, habitual and even suspicious. The work is an exploration of urban survival, self-preservation, and a dreaming of possibilities. …My intention is to make a work that embraces the multiplicity of an urban Johannesburg experience. [blogged by nathaniel on nathanielstern.com] Continue reading