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Tag: Los Angles

Moving sidewalks and robots that attack – new art from LA

Published July 19, 2007

I was checking out Flash Art this AM and came upon this article (heavily excerpted below) about the current Orange County Museum of Art California Biennial being heavily skewed towards the science fiction edge of the world. This is really not so new – especially when you consider Robert Smithson’s heavy use of Sci-Fi in and around his work. On the other hand, is science fiction really that far removed from daily life? We now live with moving sidewalks, communicate with telephones that don’t use wires, and now have robots available as vacuum cleaners and pets. So how different are the worlds of science fiction different than what we now live in?

Anyway, I don’t really have a overwhelming point of view here – I just found the article really interesting…

And I quote from Flash Art Online:
“The consensus emerging from the 2006 Orange County Museum of Art California Biennial is that young artists on the West Coast are operating in an idiom closely linked to science-fiction. The concerns that have characterized this genre over the years are all accounted for: the imagination of future and alien civilizations (Leslie Shows); interplanetary and/or time travel (Scoli Acosta); the colonization of, or invasion from, the alien outlands (Pearl C. Hsiung); the encounter with the other (Christian Maychack); the redefinition of the idea of the human in response to the other, either alien or homemade (Sterling Ruby); the technological transformation of the human as such (Andy Alexander); the social functions of disaster, apocalypse (Marie Jager); utopia versus dystopia (My Barbarian), and so on. Even those who strive for a measure of documentary verite (Sergio De La Torre, as well as the collaborative teams Bull.Miletic and The Speculative Archive) employ the everyday as a foil for the strange. Perhaps most significantly in regard to our present moment, that quintessential sci-fi theme of communication breakdown and its inevitable outcome, war, is pervasive.”

Part one of the article is here.

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Art Basel and orbiting events – day two

Published December 9, 2006

Let’s start with the celeb sightings today – frankly I’m tired and need to do the easy stuff first. Jay Z and Beyonce this was a total fluke. I was leaving through the most inconvenient door – because where I was going was right on the other side. I get my bag checked and the next thing I know – I’m looking at this really beautiful woman – with big eyes and the most perfect skin I’ve ever seen. Pretty amazing, so it took me a few moments to see the bodyguards – and then there was HOV. The amazing thing is that I always assumed that he was like 6’2″ in fact he is more like 5’10”. 5’10” nicely dressed though. It was then I realized who it was – I’m the worst on that stuff (although reading this week, you’d think it was all I do.

Dennis Hopper I attended the “art loves movies” event last night for a special screening of “Easy Rider”.(full disclosure – I had never seen this all the way through before) Hopper mentioned that at the time he was influenced by Allen Darcangelo, Ed Ruscha, and a few other of the california artists at the time. Funny thing you can really see this during the quieter road scenes, which granted act as a transition between scenes, but still the influence is there.

The secret mass transit system I think some people know this, but did you know there is a mass transit system that effectively links all the art fairs together? Here are the basics – every fair has a bus that goes from ABMB to the other events – AQUA, NADA, and ~pulse. So your basically looking at a web of bus trips that emulate from the big show at the convention center. This has probably saved me and a number of folks a ridiculous amount of money in cab fares.

NADA This is a good show. Saw some really interesting stuff here – most of it I had not seem before. Murray Guy is showing Matthew Higgs (above), and other than having a great first name, his work is just great. While reusing book elements, he isolates them and allows the viewer to apply outside thinking to his work. This is not far from the process that William S. Burroughs and Bryon Gysin developed in the seminal book “The Third Mind”. Samson Projects (Boston) is showing the classical nudes of Gabriel Martinez. Galerie Olaf Stuber (Berlin) is showing just a couple of photos by Poison Idea. Galleri Christina Wilson, and White Columns had a few really interesting pieces as well.

Flow Art Fair is probably the best of the smaller fairs. I know this is saying quite a little bit. here’s the deal, the galleries are positioned below ABMB but above the NADA and AQUA fairs – and maybe this is just me but the quality seems higher than all of the rest (with the exception of ABMB). I was real dubious of the show – thinking it was just a me too type of event. A bought a Lori Nix(not the one above) from the Block Gallery in Boston. I was pretty giddy after that and completely ignored doing any kind of legitimate note taking. So sorry about that – I’m going back Saturday and I’ll have some real notes for you then.

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Towards the administrative sublime … or a few words on the Center for Land Use Interpretation.

Published November 27, 2006

“One is liable to see things in maps that are not there. One must be careful of the Hypothetical monsters that lurk between the maps latitudes.”
– Robert Smithson

The CLUI straddles a curious position between research and art practice. It was this idiosyncrasy that interested me last year at the Whitney Biennial.

The CLUI has never made any claims as to being an art practice (that I know of) or even creating a project that is labeled “art”. They are however watched as well as granted money by arts foundations as well as land use organizations (in fact the CLUI has received a NEA grant – noteworthy in itself for a “non-art” organization). Practitioners from related fields, as well as academics are not quite as quick to accept the CLUI because of the less than traditional methods that are used. A quick case study about the CLUI could be made for the Nevada desert, in particular the area we know as “Area 51” and The Nellis Range.

Nevada has the greatest expanse of restricted land in the country – as well as some of the most secretive parts of military industry. The Nellis Range is operated by the Air Force which uses the area to conduct live tests (cluster bombing fake villages and the like) as well as who knows what else. An interesting note, parts of The Nellis Range don’t even officially exist on the map. Employees stationed at the range are flown in from a private terminal in Las Vegas airport. To get access to the site The CLUI conducted over 9 years of research which ended with photographing signage claiming restricted access. The centers assessment of the area ended up relying on detailed descriptions of closed gates and guard houses. It should be noted their method never once involved hoping the fence – instead they circumnavigated the range, while noting that there is a good view from the fence.

I think that it is this part – mapping the unmapped is what interests me most.

Some other events they have directed include “The Tour of the Monuments of the Great American Void” including the Bonneville Salt Flats and, “Margins in Our Midst: A Journey into Irwindale” A tour bus outing in which they told the passengers; “We will be going to some of the most banal and dramatic landscapes of Los Angeles, and by the time we are done, we won’t be able to tell the difference.”

The Center is notorious in not taking a political or should I say accountable stand in the actual use of land. The mundane of the administrative is really the focus – this acts as a substitute for the drama of the tangible (or the beautiful). This approach – using some of the smaller strategies from conceptual art and looking at the edges of our cultural use of the space we live in is the open ended map that The CLUI is creating.

Worth noting:
The CLUI has a newsletter – The Lay of the Land. This should be interesting reading in the long term – in the sort term I suggest you try the web site http://www.clui.org

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