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Digital Media: Here today, gone tomorrow?

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

by Aurélie Beatley

Our cultural production has greatly increased over the past decade because of the growth of technology. Many aspects of this phenomenon have been debated, from the artistic merit of the democratization of the creative process to the value of protecting older forms of expression such as film and analog photography. But there is a curious event occurring. As culture digitizes itself, with such products as the Kindle, or television on the Internet, or digital photography (so easy even my seven-year old cousin can plaster pictures of herself all over the web!), these traces also disappear at a faster rate than ever before.

As of December 2008 there were 186,727,854 websites on the Internet; some 31 million having been added in 2008 alone, with 1,463,632,361 people surfing the Internet worldwide. There is a pervasive understanding that most, if not all, media will become digital in the next ten years. This puts artists in an interesting position: Digital art is obviously the way of the future. Most designers now work almost exclusively digitally, because the information they work with is also digital. There may be small pockets of resistance to it in the film and fine arts communities, but for the most part the digital revolution has provided an alternative method of production that is cheaper, simpler, more universal, and gradually becoming just as aesthetically accomplished as non-digital forms.

Yet there is one aspect of the digital revolution that may cause trouble for artists, and that is its transience. For all its ubiquity and ease of use, digital media is ephemeral. It is created on and for computers and, unless you take the trouble to print it out on archival paper, it will eventually disappear as the format it is saved in becomes obsolete or the website it is hosted on dissolves into the cybernetic void. What this means for digital artists is that they are perpetually threatened with the loss of their work. What this means for culture is that we find ourselves threatened with a plateau.

If the rate of our cultural output is equaled by the rate of its disappearance—and the drastic increase of the speed at which culture is manufactured would lend credence to this argument—then there is no real output at all. In effect, we erase our history as we create more of it. The second part of that dilemma is that the creation of culture is no longer solely in the hands of professionals and institutions, but rather in the hands of any person connected to the internet and lucky enough to possess a scanner, a digital camera, or a keyboard (or even just a cellular phone).

Now, the paradox is, of course, that if media is not on the Internet, then it may as well not exist. Even the most traditional artists must have an outpost on the web if they are to have any chance of disseminating their work. I recently discovered a folk group that is so steeped in the past that they only use antique instruments and sing in colloquial Gaelic. But I found them on MySpace. Therefore, we are faced with a contradiction in terms: in order for our artwork to be aknowledged we are obliged to put it up on a support that is impermanent. Not only that, but it is resistant to inclusion in the traditional forms of artistic display (galleries and museums), because of its format and because it does not translate completely into a physical medium.

Charlie Gere, the Director of Research at the Institute for Cultural Research at Lancaster University and Chair of CHArt (the Computers and the History of Art group), has explored the ramifications of web 2.0 for culture and cultural institutions. He sees the developing trend as a definitive break with the past because scholarly institutions seem ill equipped to deal with it. “Given that the emergence of the mass media can be dated back to the late 19th century, whereas these new forms of art history only really arose in the 1970s and ‘80s,” says Gere, “there is clearly something of a lag in the responsiveness of art historians to shifting conditions of visual and artistic culture, and I think that Art Historians are not really that responsive to the possibilities of new media.”

This means that not only is digital media prone to disappearance by its very existence in formats that do not last, but our scholarly institutions, the tool we use to verbalize and digest culture, to situate it within the continuum of our achievement and build upon its foundation, is not equipped to process it.

Gere, however, does not see this as a problem. In fact, our connection to the past and to “permanent” media is tenuous at best. The great libraries of antiquity have all burned down at one time or another, resulting in the loss of much accumulated knowledge that was never retrieved, and we have emerged as a civilization from ancestors who wrote nothing down, relying on a (now lost) oral history. Every revolution sees the burning of ancient data, be it political or technological. Therefore, the changes in the format of culture to a brave new world of media that functions at a rate and speed that human minds cannot actually comprehend is simply the next step in the macro trend.

That said, I would encourage you all to make hard copies. It is always good to have a portfolio handy; one that cannot pull a disappearing act.

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Famous (and Possibly Deceased) Artist Personal Ads

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

Gaunt, awkward New Jersey native seeks unattached video artist for mutually beneficial partnership. Join me for long walks by the mud, salt crystals, rocks, water, salt, and on the occasional rock-collecting trip. Interests include: dinosaurs and ice.  Must be willing to travel in spite of imperfect measuring systems. Experience with helicopters and dump trucks a big plus. Just looking for someone to stroll with around the infinite spiral or just while away these days of unchecked and inevitable entropy of the uncanny materialism of geological time. Meet me by the quarry just up the road from the turnpike on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Bring your chisel and periodic table if you’d like to get elemental with me.

Elegant but aging Japanese-American woman seeks dedicated company and a little hero worship. I am a woman of the fire, of the music, of the sacred curly zen tree. I am a wild woman. I lie on John Cage’s piano, and I break up pop groups. But you will not regret your time with me. I will give you a box of smile, if you want one. We can sit up on the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland and I will tell you about times when you weren’t yet born. I may even invite you into another Bed-In for Peace, where we can invite the general public to cut away my clothes. Call 1800 YOKO ONO and sing me a silent song, if you dare.

Spunky, combative English Sexpot seeks large numbers of men to add to her illustrious tent list. I enjoy long, inebriated nights, and beds full of tissues, dried out mascara bottles, cocaine baggies, and sweat patches. I have a much loved c*nt, so you will be a lucky fellow if I let you in on the game. Everyone wants a piece of me—even Elton John and George Michael, which is a bit bizarre, but these days I can sell my sh*t for £50,000. We can wallow in my quilts, ash our fags on them, talk about my aborted babies and whine about how I should have won the Turner. If this sounds like your sort of party, meet me at Margate and we can roll around on the concrete and declare everyone to be f*cking tossers and wankers.

Midwestern transplant and Korean War Veteran seeks rigorous, opinionated or at least interesting partner. Come share in mutual disdain for almost everything and everyone still beholden to European criteria or other false and hierarchical constructs. Strong interest in inanimate objects a huge plus. Must be OK with softness and hardness—so long as specificity of form is retained. Turn-ons: all things empirically derived, exceedingly hard, singular, flaccid, polarized and breast-like, including light switches, profound forms, ice cream cones and hamburgers. Turn-offs include: relational parts, Cartesian bullshit, generalizations, and the federal government. Let us shed the a priori and Manhattan, move to the high desert and fumble around in the dark for the soft switches or other specific objects and aggregate mutually driven non-self-contained un-bracketed passages of experience.

Slightly balding, heavy smoking, fast talking Brooklynite seeks young, willing, able, flexible, virile girl to squeeze inside a box and enter into my association area. Must be open to a potentially successful sex change, sharing, concrete poetry,  having your eyes pried open and generally being threatened. Looking for someone interested in somewhat humorous onanistic activities and recording devices. Tolerance of lengthy trance-like states is an absolute must. Willing to compete in feats of strength and agility and bite myself (if necessary) to prove my worth and existence to you broads—you can read me like an open book. I can be a bit territorial, so if you plan on two-timing me you’d better hide my crowbar… or if you’re into that kind of thing grab a blindfold and let’s see what happens.  Meet at Pier 7 in the late evening, come alone and don’t be scared—I’ll be there for you. Or just come over to my apartment sometime and we can smoke cigarettes, listen to The Doors on my sweet hi-fi, read some Mickey Spillane aloud and help each other define our bodies in space. Or maybe I’ll find you underneath my kitchen table touching my legs.

Beautiful Cuban-American woman with an ambiguous relationship to Santería seeks companionship and protection from possibly dangerous husband whose obsession with the serial repetition of identical industrial forms should be criminal. Enjoys long walks in nature that end with digging bodily forms in the grass or playing dead in ponds. Also likes to paint walls with blood in the nude. Really just open to doing almost anything naked that includes fire, mud, ash, or bodily fluids. Must enjoy exchanging and attaching each other’s body hair—mustaches are my favorite. What are yours?

I AM LOOKING FOR: ALL I REALLY NEED IS LOVE FEAR IS STRONGER THAN LOVE CONQUERS ALL SEES NO FLAWS WILL FIND A WAY NEVER GROWS OLD IS BLIND MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND….THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL MAKES EVERYTHING LOVELY……EVERY BIRD LOVES TO HEAR HIMSELF SING LOVE YOUR ENEMIES…..WITH A FACE ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

Looking for bud for non-homo J/O. I get off surfing the web for pics of hot babes, especially into ass…I bookmark the best pics, then j/o to them, looking for a skinny young bud that could get off on same scene and j/o together SWM, forty-six, five-ten, 192, stocky and well built, hairy, regular Joe except for bustling art career, DDF, you be too. For mutual J/O, massage, etc. but possibility to wind up on film.

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The Sight of Music: Joseph Grigely’s “St. Cecelia” at the Museum of Contemporary Art

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

by Brian Wallace

Named after the patron saint of music, “St. Cecelia” uses audio recordings and music to examine the intricacies of sound through the experience of a deaf artist. Deaf since the age of ten, Joseph Grigely makes work that deals with the way sound “looks” and the relationship between hearing and remembering.”

The centerpiece of the MCA exhibition is a two-channel video installation called St. Cecelia (2007). The piece is composed of two wall-sized projections of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society Choir singing songs like “My Favorite Things” and “Jolly Old Saint Nicolas.” One video is true to the original lyrical arrangement, while the other has been rearranged, with some of the words replaced by different words that look the same when lip read.

Grigely’s purpose in composing visually parallel lyrics for familiar songs was to reflect on our “infinite capacity to misunderstand each other.” He has achieved an interesting and often absurdly hilarious result. For example, “Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel” becomes “Creamy exponents and newspapers too,” while “Johnny wants a pair of skates” changes to “Johnny was a bastard child.”

Remembering is a Difficult Job, but Someone’s Got To Do It (2005) also deals with memory and interpretation, creating a similarly humorous result, but from a more personal perspective. A video monitor on the floor shows Grigely being interviewed. The interviewer asks him to remember and sing out loud songs that he knew the words to before losing his hearing—mainly jingles from advertisements and the theme from Gilligan’s Island. Disparities between his memory and his ability to actually recall these tunes present themselves; the music has not stopped playing in his head, but his ability to accurately carry a tune has changed.

Working in collaboration on many of the “St. Cecelia” works with his wife and fellow artist, Amy Vogel, Grigely has succeeded in installing a truly multimedia experience at the MCA, and one worth checking out for anyone who can see, or hear, or remember.

“St. Cecilia” will be on view through February 22 at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave.

Interview with Joseph Grigely

Joseph Grigely is a professor at SAIC and the head of the Visual Critical Studies department. I caught up with him to discuss “St. Cecilia,” humor, memory and meaninglessness at his home in Chicago in early January.

Brian Wallace: I wanted to start by addressing humor. It seems that much of “St. Cecelia” has an element of humor, silliness, a kind of poignant absurdity. Can you talk about the necessity of humor in your work? In art? In communication?

JG: The thing is, people are social creatures, and we like to laugh. There are so many kinds and levels of humor too, and it’s been intertwined with many other complex human emotions in art for… how long?  Look at Chaucer: so serious and so funny.  Look at Shakespeare: same thing.  I don’t think it’s a lot different for visual art. A lot of good artists manage to dance the fine line between being serious and being funny—Maria Eichhorn, Adel Abdessemed, Andreas Slomoniski, Olaf Bruening, Peter Land, even Douglas Gordon—they all do this so well. Of course, they all do it differently. But that’s the beauty of it all. You don’t find this kind of humor so frequently in work by American artists; the Brits came up with David Shrigley, and we came up with Joseph Kosuth. Maybe we don’t drink enough?

BW: This issue of F Newsmagazine is concerned with memory. Several of the pieces in “St. Cecelia” deal with handwritten notes, it seems that what you have here is a written documentation of things that hearing people can simply say or hear and then cast aside never to be revisited again. Having access to such a database of conversations, both profound and mundane (and everything in between), do you think about your personal memory through these notations? Do you think they serve as illustrations? Are they something else entirely?

JG: Yes, the conversations hold memory—a lot of it. I was just spending Christmas with an old friend, and we were eating cheese and crackers, and I said to her: do you remember the time years ago when you wrote down, “Yes, we ate your Triscuit!” and she said, “Uh, no.” So, maybe it’s the wrong kind of memory?—as I remember all these little inconsequential things people say to me. I suppose also the conversation papers are drawings. Drawings of speech: something that’s not quite writing because of how the words lack context—there’s no beginning of a conversation, there’s no end, just the fragments of it. To me it’s the most meaningless stuff that’s most interesting in the end, like when someone writes down “Bye” or something like that… or “fuck you!”—things that really just don’t get written down, and don’t need writing even.

BW: You just mentioned meaninglessness. There is a segment of “St. Cecelia” that mentions “meaningful meaninglessness.” Can you expand on that concept?

JG: Well, it’s a lot like the idea of the still life, which Norman Bryson describes as a kind of “rhopography.” It’s from the Greek rhopos, which means ordinary everyday stuff that otherwise gets trampled afoot. So there’s dead fish, fruit peels, shelled nuts, cabbages, stuff like that. Ordinary conversations are not a lot different. When people think about language and art, they think a lot about profound stuff, but it’s the un-profound conversations from everyday life that have this rhopographic quality. One of my favorite conversations was with Ellen Cantor. We were in her studio in Jersey City one day, and about to head into NYC, so Ellen said, “wait a minute.” So I waited and waited, and she came back and wrote: “I had to set up cat litter.”

BW: Do you think that the ability to choose what is meaningful, to choose which memories to hold on to is a collective human experience, or are we all involved with a more chaotic relationship with memory?

JG: Uh… I really don’t know. I think memory varies for all of us—some people remember words but others remember better the tone with which they are spoken—so I find it hard to generalize about this, or even about the “collective human experience.” All I can think of in relation to that phrase is the fact that our economy has turned into collective crap, and we are all feeling it bad.

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The Blago Breakdown

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

Delineating the Cycle of Corruption in Illinois Gobernatorial Politics (and expressing a little bit of outrage over it

By Anna Kryczka

The recently impeached Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, was elected to office in 2002. His original campaign promised a change from the business-as-usual pay-to-play politics that have come to characterize the political climate in the Land of Lincoln. Following rumors of rampant extortion and suspicious hiring practices in the preceding administration under Governor George Ryan, Blagojevich’s message of reform played well with an exasperated electorate.

The Ryan scandal involved (among other things) issuing commercial and trucking driver’s licenses to unqualified individuals in exchange for bribes. The license-for-bribes scandal released two thousand illegal and untrained drivers onto the roads, and resulted in numerous crashes—several deadly. An accident involving one of these unlicensed drivers killed six children and led the investigators back to Ryan’s bribe scheme in Springfield.

This kick-back scheme did not simply engage in the typical sort of crony-ism, nepotism, and pocket lining surrounding government contracts, hiring and promotion. Rather, this despicable situation resulted in the loss of human life. Ryan’s betrayal of the mandate to rule in the best interest of the citizens of Illinois did not go unpunished. Ryan was indicted and is currently serving
time in Indiana.

Recently, several noted Illinois politicians—including Senator Dick Durbin—have suggested releasing the aging Ryan so he can support his ailing wife. His release would represent a heinous double standard. This sort of pity/prestige pardon, which would result in releasing guilty individuals due to their age or a family circumstance, negates the very legitimacy of the court’s ruling and would indicate a willingness to excuse and accept political or white-collar criminals as not subject to the same set of judicial and legal procedures as ordinary criminals. There are, no doubt, numerous aging inmates whose situation mirrors Ryan’s—they, however, lack senatorial sympathy. However, Ryan did not receive the coveted and expected Presidential pardon as part of the Bush administration’s death rattle.

The Blagojevich scandal (as it had been revealed thus far) does not involve ordinary graft, but rather seems to involve schemes, threats, and maneuvering that reflect an imbecilic degree of hubris. Blagojevich’s rise to the governor’s mansion is indicative of the complex and powerful patronage systems, which, when played right, can produce an adequate opportunity to garner statewide influence.

What is unusual about Blagojevich’s activities—as indicated in the warrant for his December 9 arrest—is that they did not merely involve the typical favors/contracts/jobs-for-cash practices which would develop a loyal network of fundraisers, activists, contractors, and political muscle. Rather, Blagojevich’s recent schemes reflect his estrangement from the political machine that propelled him to office in the first place, as well as complete loss of critical judgment.

It should be noted that the reforms Blagojevich hinted at did not completely go awry. Among other things, he was responsible for a number of public initiatives, including the All Kids plan, which provides state health insurance for all children under 18, and a scheme to give senior citizens a free ride on the CTA. Yet these few positive initiatives aren’t enough to redeem Blagojevich from the pit of corruption he dwells in.

Blagojevich’s activities had been under federal investigation since 2003 for more common sorts of hiring and contract fraud. It appears as though this scrutiny did not deter Blagojevich, however, from threatening to withdraw state funding for Children’s Memorial Hospital, when its CEO failed to contribute to the governor’s coffers last year. Even the most deplorable political grafters ought to know how to save face by avoiding intimidating the most sympathetic of organizations. In this instance (among others), Blagojevich demonstrated his lack of fluency with the role of benevolent despot and careful criminal.

The allegations surrounding his naming of President Barack Obama’s replacement in the Senate make manifest a total loss of prudence. Blagojevich’s language and presumptions in the transcripts of the wiretaps indicate a break with all norms of reality and humility. His position as sole arbiter to fill the vacant senate seat prompted him to embark on a megalomaniac paper chase rather than fulfill his role honorably. When Blagojevich’s indiscriminate search for politicians willing to play ball appeared to be fruitless, the wiretap transcripts have the Governor proposing to appoint himself, in order to prepare for a 2016 run for President.

Let me repeat this information so that it fully sinks in: Blagojevich spoke openly with regard to a bribe scheme of grand proportions, while under federal investigation, and believed that appointing himself Senator would put him into position to garner a Presidential bid.

Accusations related to these irrational impulses and activities that have come to light in last couple of months have been met by the Governor with pig-headed defiance. His recent post-arrest appointment of Roland Burris to the Senate seat in question, as well as his refusal to step down from his own position, is representative of a lack of reasonable judgment and continued insolence.

Blagojevich is decidedly unfit to govern—an activity he never really engaged in in the first place. The Illinois House of Representatives has impeached Blagojevich in an effort to put a stop to what has been called by US Attorney for Cook County Patrick Fitzgerald a “political corruption crime spree” or, more crassly, a “freak show,” by Illinois State Representative Jack Franks. The Illinois Senate vote to approve removal and begin an impeachment trial was yet to conclude at the time this article was written.

Blagojevich has endeavored to present himself as a populist in the grips of what he callously referred to as a “political lynch mob.” Beyond this gross and offensive misuse of hyperbole, what this indicates is that Blagojevich will likely try to drag down as many others as possible if he does take the fall, and certainly indicates that this situation will not end gracefully, since Blagojevich seems to fail to recognize that the center of this controversy is his gross abuse of power.

The campaign of reform that propelled Blagojevich into office has proven to be folly as he joins the infamous and capacious ranks of indicted Illinois politicians—just another chapter in the business-as-usual pay-to-play politics of the Land of Lincoln.

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Taking the Pulse, 200 Hearts at a Time

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park, 2008, NYC

By Emily Bauman

In 1947, Ralph Ellison famously wrote, “Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death.” There is a feeling that this state of marginalization described in Invisible Man has become pervasive in contemporary society. We battle on a daily basis to make our existence matter and to record our presence upon our landscape, but rarely do we take the time to appreciate the fleeting and momentary beauty of our lives.

In the Fall of 2008, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer installed a work called Pulse Park in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park. A place of leisure, off the beaten track, but enclosed within the city’s daily chaos, and home of Danny Meyer’s famous Shake Shack, where New Yorkers gather to slurp down amazing milkshakes and munch on gourmet burgers, the park offered Lozano-Hemmer a destination in which people would walk about without reason or purpose other than to interact within a public space.

Designed specifically for the park’s oval field, Lozano-Hemmer created a self-contained installation composed of lights and human heartbeats to be stumbled upon, reveled in, and then left behind.

Pulse Park offered to turn passers-by into participants by recording their heartbeats and having them projected as rhythmic pulses of light onto the lawn together with the pulsing beams representing the two hundred other most recent visitors. The result, which Lozano-Hemmer describes as a “destabilizing experience because it totally surrounds you,” syncopates the different beats that get locked into repetitions, which then offset each other to create different levels, like minimalist music. Coming together, singular rhythms “create something that is greater than the individual recording.”

Lozano-Hemmer has been continually interested in creating interfaces in which connective—rather than collective—experiences can be had: experiences that depend on singularity and eccentricity rather than blanket or universal states. Nicolas Bourriaud suggests in Relational Aesthetics, “These days, utopia is being lived on a subjective, everyday basis, in the real time of concrete and intentionally fragmentary experiments… It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbours in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.” Lozano-Hemmer does not want to create an idyllic landscape, universal experience or “global village,” only this temporary space for interpersonal relation and contemplation.

“The poetic interpretation of this piece that I enjoy is the memento mori,” Lozano-Hemmer says: the idea that the recordings mark the presence and participation of the visitor as well as their disappearance—“a brief reminder of our ephemeral existence,” he adds.

The basically romantic conception behind this work, which originally took form as Almacén de Corazonadas, 2006 (loosely translated to “Warehouse of Hunches/Intuitions” but called Pulse Room when presented to English speaking audiences)—a room of 100 hanging bare light bulbs arranged in a grid throughout a floor of an old textile factory in Mexico—was inspired by hearing his unborn children’s heartbeats when his wife was pregnant with twins. He became interested in “amplifying intimate readings” because it offered a form for sensing what makes us unique.

In its first version, participants could follow their own heartbeat as it moved sequentially through the room, either tracking the registration of their presence or choosing to get lost among the similar signs of other lives. Pulse Park implements Pulse Room’s concept on a larger scale and departs from this option of participant self-absorption, which disconnected individuals from one another in becoming mired in the specificity of their own rhythm. Immediately, the singular representation is subsumed in a cacophony that comes together as a fugue, in which the beholder can no longer track how—or for how long—their personal rhythm participates as an eccentric note in the greater impromptu composition.

In Pulse Park the vanishing point of representation becomes temporal and responsive (interactive), rather than linear, material or traceable. The representation of presence becomes ephemeral since light represents the singular being and its uniqueness, as well as a general human quality of temporality and extinguishability.

In “Questions From a Worker Who Reads” (1935) Bertold Brecht wrote, “Great Rome is full of triumphal arches./Who erected them?/….Every page a victory./Who cooked the feast for the victors?” Citing this poem, Lozano-Hemmer keeps in mind that dominant narratives gloss over the everyday, making our lives seem like invisible existences that dissipate into time.

As Brecht wrote, narratives of power are played out in and inscribed upon the landscape of public spaces through ceremonies, monuments and architecture. Lozano-Hemmer’s “Pulse” works endeavor to reclaim, for a short time, a segment of the public sphere, making it celebrate and commemorate the momentary and fleeting; the people who are fundamental to society because they are the singular and eccentric elements that make it up.

Pulse Park was on view Oct. 24–Nov. 17, 2008, as part of Mad. Sq. Art. For a video of the work and of other related art works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, visit  www.lozano-hemmer.com.

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Looking Up, Marking Down

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

“of or relating to the sky or visible heavens” at Western Exhibitions

by Corinna Kirsch

Currently installed at Western Exhibitions, “of or relating to the sky or visible heavens” features the work of Michelle Grabner, Carrie Gundersdorf, Shane Huffman, Matthew Northridge, Melissa Oresky and Stan Shellabarger. Curated by the gallery’s director, Scott Speh, this show plays off the sociable and airy quality of the main exhibition space, made so by the wall of windows at the gallery’s far end. The title of the show is the dictionary definition of the word “celestial,” and, in the straightforward but expansive fashion of a definition, the exhibition includes artworks that elaborate on simple associations related to the standard meanings of “sky” as well as the lyrical meanings of “visible heavens.”

This mixture of both systematic and poetic implications—along the with “scare quotes” that surround the title, preventing anyone from taking the phrase too seriously—allow artists to represent both a sincere version of the exhibition’s theme and to touch on the irony of trying to represent the immateriality of the celestial. For instance, many of the works, including those by Gundersdorf, Grabner and Huffman, document how they were made: emphasizing their materiality.

In her trio of paintings, including Trails and Space – 20 min – neon pink and gray version (2008), Carrie Gundersdorf’s muted neon watercolor and color pencil designs extract forms from images that use various methods of recording the sky (from spectroscopes, computer-enhanced photographs, time-lapse photos, etc.). These images break down this intangible landscape into symbols and simple geometric shapes—think Color Field paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, overlain with Minimal Sol LeWitt forms, but with astronomical implications.

Shane Huffman’s inkjet print Forevering (2008) at first looks like an ethereal landscape taken by a NASA satellite. However, the materials used to construct the scene are anything but celestial, consisting of semen and menstrual blood. As a print shown in a glossy format, these abject forms are transformed into a flat decorative surface. But, even though the actual materials are absent, their imprint still remains.

Michelle Grabner’s corner work, Untitled Flock Drawing (2009), hovers between drawing, painting and sculpture. Made from rayon flock and spray adhesive, the fluffy white specks coating the corner of the gallery float or migrate upwards, creating a second, textural layer to the gallery walls. Although small pieces of the material were falling off the wall on the exhibition’s opening night (or perhaps because this was happening), the work seems to gesture towards the process of its making. The splattering, spraying, and foaming of material result in and are indexed by the variegated, infinitesimal forms made on the wall. Similar to how no two snowflakes look alike, no two of Grabner’s globs of flock are identical.

The blue firmament becomes the common motif among the works in the exhibition, allowing for play and expansion upon a common visual and poetic theme. But what is significant about this fact and what does it mean that many artists express a relationship to the sky within their works? Though the works within this show were compelling instances of contemporary responses to materiality, the thematic nature of the exhibition left me with questions. A more in-depth connection is never established between the artists and the theme they all employ, leaving the relevance of the show’s “celestial” works in question.

“of or relating to the sky or visible heavens” will be on view Jan. 9–Feb. 14. Western Exhibitions is located at 119 N. Peoria, Suite 2A. Gallery hours: Wednesday through Saturdays, 11a.m.–6p.m. www.westernexhibitions.com

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CHANGE comes to the Arts?

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

Obama’s proposed art policies and their possible outcomes

by Anna Kryczka

Obama’s art policies, as outlined during the campaign, are both sweeping and somewhat revolutionary. No other candidate presented a program that went into as much detail as Obama’s, and if he manages to implement some of his campaign promises the outcome could be very encouraging for both art education programs and working artists.

One of the goals set forth in his campaign was to “reinvest in art education” as a commitment to remaining a competitive force in the global economy. His tracts on the matter quoted the president of the National Endowment for the Arts, Michael Dana Gioia, positing that art education exists to form individuals who have a complete set of skills, beyond the base requirement for passage from class to class, such as reading and math. In order to reinvest in art education, he presented a series of detailed proposals.

The first proposal was to increase funding for the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grants, an organization that promotes partnerships between schools and art associations.

The second, and rather more exciting, proposal was to create a corps of young artists who would be trained to work and teach in economically depressed school systems. This New Deal-esque vision would help not only implement viable art programs in areas that lack the funding to create them of their own accord, but would also present many recent art school graduates with the opportunity to shape the future of the nation’s art curricula.

His third promise was to publicly champion the arts by underscoring how important art education is to the global development of any student, even the ones who do not go on to pursue a career in the arts. Obama also pledged to increase funding to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which has suffered from massive budget cuts under the previous administration, to promote cultural diplomacy, provide artists with affordable health care, attract foreign talent, and ensure fair taxation to working artists.

Obama’s pledge to increase funding for the NEA (and other organizations) by reaching out on the federal level leaves many leaders in the art community slightly skeptical. In the face of the global economic crisis we find ourselves mired in, how much funding will really be available? As Obama proposes to bail out Wall Street and return our financial institutions to equal footing, we must consider that art education programs may be very far down the list of recipients of federal funds.

Lesley Friedman Rosenthal, the Vice President and General Counsel of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, wrote in a December 17 article that the way to re-invigorate our art programs is not necessarily to increase funding by the federal government, that in fact a surge in funding in this economic climate is unlikely, and that it would not be nearly enough if it did happen. She encourages the Obama administration to consider the alternative, which is to create a coordinated national arts policy and learn from local and state governmental art councils that have proven to have much more funding capacity than federal programs, distributing roughly ten times as many grants as the NEA. Friedman also assures us that this does not have to be expensive. By siphoning off extra revenue generated by specialty license plates or providing an optional check-off on income tax to support the arts—the policies in California and Alabama, respectively—a sizeable budget for the arts could be created from scratch.

The idea of creating an artist corps could be a brilliant move for this administration, because it is something that the federal government could create for relatively minimal cost and unleash in areas where art education does not get the sort attention it should because of economic realities.
It would provide a large group of young artists with employment prospects and the ability to influence future art policy by implementing it in a real way.

As city and state budgets have seen dramatic slashes over the past few months, many institutions have been putting their hopes in the formation of this corps as a way of relieving some of the pressures they face balancing their budgets and making allowances for art programs. Richard Burrows, director of Arts Education for the Los Angeles Unified School District, once the head of an expansive program for art school funding, has had to dramatically reduce contributions to art education in the face of a massive state budget deficit. He, as well as many others in his position, sees the corps idea as a fresh way of dealing with the problem of reduced state participation.

Not many of us remember the 1930s post office paintings, but there is a strong historical precedent for the usefulness of creating corps that cater to and make use of the creative community. We are generally the first to suffer from budget cuts and times of economic depression because of the mistaken
impression that art is a luxury that can be encouraged in times of plenty and excised in leaner periods. The artist corps idea probably remains the most viable proposition in light of the other, far more problematic, budget problems that face the new administration.

Obama’s proposal to make the US more attractive to foreign artists is also a concept that has drawn much interest. This policy could positively impact the economy as well as create new friends abroad by opening previously closed avenues of discourse. Obama’s talk of streamlining the visa process would not only impact the arts positively, but would probably mean an influx of talent in other areas as well. But from a solely economic point of view, it would be in the interest of the administration to not only facilitate artist visas but to make some concrete changes in the fiscal treatment of artists.

The example to cite (though it has fallen on hard times), is that of Ireland. Charles Haughey’s enlightened policy of providing a tax haven for artists while he was minister of finance was one of the measures that decisively helped Ireland rise out of the economic quagmire it had been in since the formation of the republic. It fostered talent and helped struggling artists, but at the same time it made Ireland an attractive place to settle for high profile artists from all over Europe. Some of the highest grossing musical acts in the world have relocated to Ireland to benefit from the tax cut. The result demonstrates that the economic machine goes both ways—the influx of money brought into the country by these performers (and by the business community that Ireland also sought to attract with similar measures) helped buoy its economy up from third world status to the level of prosperity it has enjoyed for the last two decades.

Obama’s policy could well take a leaf out of the Fianna Fáil’s book. The new President’s support of the Artist-Museum Partnership Act is a step in the right direction—it would allow artists to deduct the fair-market value of their work rather than just the cost of the materials when they make charitable donations—and his pledge to provide us with affordable health care is important (though it is a lump pledge that simply calls attention to health care policy, rather than to his artistic commitments).
Our best hope is that this administration will understand that re-invigorating the creative community—the community which in effect grosses some of the most spectacular salaries in the world—cannot fail to be good for the economy. By making the US attractive to foreign talent and by fostering our own, the new administration could open yet another avenue for recovery from the economic
crisis we now face.

Another measure that has recently been garnering a great deal of press is Quincy Jones’s lobby for the creation of a secretary for the arts within the new administration. The US is the only developed country in the world to lack a Ministry of Culture, which in our European counterparts is instrumental in the continued public funding and support of the creative community and its educational outreach. While this is an exciting concept, it is doubtful that such a ministry will actually ever see the light of day. Music critic and journalist John Rockwell cautions that the likelihood of the US adopting a more European model of outright funding for the arts, as opposed to the current one of private donations fueled by tax deductions, is slim. “Without that marriage of pomp (a secretary in the cabinet) and substance in the form of real money from Washington for the arts,” says Rockwell, “there would be little reason for Obama to expend political capital on creating a secretary any time soon.” The head of the NEA could just as easily fill the office of secretary for the arts as a mere cheerleader for art programs and funding, he continues.

Indeed, while there is much excitement over the fact that Obama even bothered to create a platform for the arts, which has never been done, the hard economic reality may well curtail many of his proposed re-invigoration schemes. The climate in Washington is both hopeful and slightly dubious—hopeful that this new president with his pop-culture savvy may make a difference in the art world and heal some of the wounds inflicted by the culture wars, but forced to acknowledge that the war funding and the bailouts for the global economy will most likely come before any remanning in art policy.

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Re-viewing Mapplethorpe

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

“Polaroids: Mapplethorpe” at the Block Museum

by Gregory Harris

Now that Polaroid film is all but extinct—production of the instant film will cease later this year—it is hard to look at those unique and delicate little prints without a sense of nostalgia. The anticipation and eventual (never quite instant enough) gratification that made the process so enticing has, unsurprisingly, been overshadowed by point and shoot digital photography.

Despite the feeling of a bygone era that Polaroids now evoke, the current exhibition at the Block Museum at Northwestern, “Polaroids: Mapplethorpe,” thrives by showing how a young artist made this technology fresh and exciting. Robert Mapplethorpe was new to photography and fresh out of art school when he first picked up a Polaroid model 360 in 1970 to create raw material for the collages he was making at the time. The ninety vintage Polaroids included in the exhibition, none larger than four by five inches, insightfully show a curious and inventive artist discovering the worlds of sexuality, intimacy, urban life, and art through a new medium that he would come to master.

The exhibition spans the six-year period, from 1970 to 1975, in which Mapplethorpe made some 1,500 Polaroid photographs, as he developed into a mature artist. All of the subjects that made him infamous in the 1980s are present—sexually explicit nudes, penetrating portraits, and erotically charged still lifes—and some unfamiliar subjects—cityscapes, commom household objects, and even Mapplethorpe’s upturned feet—appear as well. Unlike the overly polished look of his mature work, Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids show the inventive spontaneity of an artist that does not yet have the answers.

This process of watching him find his way is what makes the show compelling. There are several unremarkable images (a telephone from a worm’s eye view, a pair of shoes, an electrical pole from below) that make you wonder if they would ever be exhibited in a museum if the name Mapplethorpe were not attached to them. Still, we see him experimenting with extreme angles and playing with ways to fill the frame with a figure, as in a dynamic self-portrait where Mapplethorpe’s half naked body elegantly curves around the left side of the photograph while he talks on the telephone.

Though these photographs are not as explicit as one could expect from the Mapplethorpe of the 1980s (sorry, no bull whips up the rectum), the Polaroids, with the scratched, streaky surfaces of the prints and the unrefined poses and crude settings of their subjects, exhibit a raw emotion that was not present in the later work. These photographs show a potentially more intriguing side of Mapplethorpe; one less concerned with perfection and ideals—the lighting is often flawed, the backgrounds rough, and the composition slightly askew—and more focused on finding a way to
see the world.

On view through April 5 at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive,
Evanston, IL. Tues. 10a.m.–5p.m., Wed.–Fri. 10a.m.–8p.m., Sat.–Sun. 12-5p.m

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The benefit of hindsight

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

by Rachel Sima Harris

The portrait that incited the controversy

On May 11, 1988, School of the Art Institute of Chicago student, David K. Nelson Jr., showed his painting Mirth & Girth: a portrait depicting an overweight Harold Washington in a bra, panties and garter belt, at a private student exhibition at SAIC. Nelson’s stated intention was to respond to what he viewed as the deification of the African American Mayor, who passed away several months prior to the show.

The painting, whose name was derived from a social club for overweight gay men and which echoed the snide insinuations of some of Washington’s rivals at the height of Chicago’s racially charged Council Wars, so offended many members of the African American community that several black aldermen arrived at the exhibition demanding that it be taken down.  Before the painting was finally arrested by the Chicago Police Department, a crowd had developed outside the School’s entrance and a shouting match between predominantly white art students and predominantly black members of the community was underway.

While the painting was only up for a few hours  it  incited one of the largest race relations and First Amendment controversies in the history of the School. In a Chicago Tribune interview, Nelson told Toni Schlesinger that he “didn’t want this to polarize a community.” But polarize he did. In the days, weeks and months following the display of the painting, SAIC students held a rally protesting the confiscation of the painting, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan characterized the display of the painting as a “total disrespect of our feelings and our community,” a group of clergymen led by the head of Operation PUSH called for SAIC to create a review policy to prevent offensive portraits by its students from being shown in the future, and Alderman Robert Shaw led a chorus of voices for change stating that “only 6 percent of the Art Institute’s 1,400 students are black and we want that changed. The Institute would have been more sensitive to the concerns of the black community if there were more blacks both as administrators and teachers and as students.”

In the aftermath, Nelson sued the city for violating his First Amendment rights and was awarded $95,000 in a settlement. School President Tony Jones created a task force “to review our progress and to assist in the continued execution” of a program to increase minorities in enrollment, faculty and staff. Art Institute Board Chairman Marshall Field issued a formal apology for displaying the painting and agreed to consider demands that the school hire more black administrators and recruit more black students.

In connection with this month’s memory theme, we asked James Britt, Head of Multicultural Affairs, to reflect on how we understand this racially charged memory when we think about diversity at SAIC then and now.

Interview with James Britt, Head of Multicultural Affairs at SAIC

Rachel Sima Harris: Around the time of this controversy, and perhaps as a response to it, the Illinois Alliance of Black Student Organizations called for racial parity with regards to faculty and student enrollment at SAIC. The president of the Illinois Alliance of Black Student Organizations James A. Brame called the Art Institute a “closed bastion of white male Western cultural supremacy.” Can you speak to that perception of the Art Institute, and perhaps how it’s changed (if you feel it has changed) in the years since then?

James Britt: I think we still have a ways to go as an institution. A clear example of this is reflected in the number of non-white persons in upper level positions at the School. We do not have one person of color at the Vice President level; we do not have one person of color at the Dean level; and there are two people of color at the Director level. One of those persons at the Director level is me, and one would assume the Director of Multicultural Affairs would most likely be a person of color because of the nature of the job, so to a certain degree my presence skews the statistic. Over 30% of our student population are students of color, yet this diversity is not reflected in our full-time staff and faculty positions. Almost 20% of our student population is Korean, however the presence of Korean administrators and faculty is virtually non-existent. It’s disconcerting to me that post-Mirth & Girth we are still wrestling with these issues. I point these facts out not to be pessimistic, but to bring light to issues that are obvious and to challenge us as a community to develop viable solutions to address these disparities.

RSH: How does diversity (or lack of it) impact the educational experience of students at SAIC?

JB: Diversity is paramount to the success of any student; without it the learning process is impeded, one becomes intellectually and emotionally stagnant, and unable to effectively navigate his/her life to the fullest in this multi-faceted society in which we live. It challenges an individual to continually refine his/her perspective, which is essential to learning. We live in a multi-racial world, it would behoove students just from a practical standpoint to develop a basic level of cultural competency; and it’s imperative as an institution we provide those opportunities for learning in the classroom, residence halls and other communal spaces.

I hope students at least acquire a baseline understanding of cultural knowledge, but I think the ultimate goal is to achieve a level of understanding or empathy where one is able to comprehend another’s point of view. That’s what I find most disappointing about Nelson’s work; that he failed or refused to acknowledge the thoughts and feelings of black Chicagoans. The City has a long history of racism and Washington’s ascent to the Mayor’s office contributed greatly to the healing process for everyone. To create a piece like this in such a cavalier manner, shortly after the man’s death and in light of other racial incidents that recently surfaced, was pouring salt on an open sore. Maybe if Nelson had provided more context for his work this could have been avoided. Maybe if we as an institution had provided a richer cultural educational experience for Nelson this would not have occurred. You ask how does diversity impact the educational experience; Nelson’s lack of accountability for his work is representative of that.

RSH: SAIC has taken on several diversity initiatives since the controversy. What were those and how have they affected change at SAIC? Do you think they’ve made a difference in the type of educational experience students have at the school or the art that comes out of it?

JB: I only know of one diversity initiative that was in place before I arrived four years ago: Diversity Leadership Teams (DLT’s). There were three groups, each designed to address diversity-related issues pertinent to students, staff and faculty. The idea was noble, but they weren’t very effective, so they dissolved shortly after my arrival. We’ve had a few permutations of the group, but nothing with longevity.

What has worked are the numerous smaller initiatives individuals or intimate groups of staff and faculty have created. For example: Professor Kym Pinder started the Archibald Motley Fund, which provides scholarships to black students at SAIC through private donations; Robyn Guest, Secretary for the President, heads our internship program with Perspectives Charter School, which serves under-represented middle- and high-school students in Chicago and the surrounding area; SAIC alum Leroy Neiman provided funds to educate high school students from disadvantage communities about art; SAIC alum Tim Nuveen, donated money for the International Student Learning Center; Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions Carolina Wheat has been working with Congressman Bobby Rush’s Art competition for youth in predominately African American communities; Andres Hernandez, Drea Howenstein, Patrick Rivers, Nicole Marroquin and a number of our students have worked with various cultural institutions/programs in the City by teaching courses, engaging in community work, among other things; OMA implements initiatives like our annual exhibition with the African American Alumni Assoc. and the South Side Community Art Center.

I think these initiatives have made a tremendous difference for those students who have participated in them. However, I would still like to see something happen on a larger scale that reaches out to the entire SAIC community.

RSH: With regard to race relations, what things still need to change at the school and how do you envision those changes becoming manifest?

JB: We need to begin to have candid conversations about diversity. I think there’s this belief that we are inherently culturally progressive because we are an art school, however this is not the case. If it were we would see greater representation of diversity in the areas I mentioned earlier, and we would not continue to have the same discussions about diversity that took place during the time of Mirth & Girth.

My first year we put together a program called Conservatism and Art. It was a panel discussion made up of conservative students and faculty who identified themselves as Christian, Republican and white. I chose this theme to illustrate a few points:

1. Even people in the majority can be a minority
2. Liberalism does not equate to openness; if one only accepts liberal views is he/she liberal?
3. Diversity affects everyone, not just students of color, women, or LGBT students.

I thought the program was highly successful. One of my colleagues commented that she had never seen so many white male students at an OMA event. A “nontraditional marginalized” student approached me afterwards and said he enjoyed the discussion but he didn’t see what it had to do with diversity. He made my point exactly; he did not connect diversity to his life experience because he isn’t a part of the socially sanctioned marginalized groups. We need to move beyond this limited viewpoint, and weave diversity into the fabric of our existence.

RSH: What do you feel the role of “Black History Month” is (generally but also specifically at SAIC)?

JB: The concept of Black History Month bothers me. The history of black Americans should be recognized everyday, in the classroom, through art history classes, lectures, etc.—it diminishes the black experience to relegate it to one month, the shortest month in the year I might add, and to make it a subset. This is the problem with many diversity initiatives. The moment a “minority” group is highlighted it devalues their experience, because if that group was a part of the larger experience and fully integrated there would be no need to make this distinction. Why isn’t there a white history month? Why not give every group a month? A truly heterogeneous community incorporates everyone’s experience, the positive and the negative. This to me is the essence of true diversity, when everything and everyone is completely integrated and there is a cultural reciprocity that takes place. This doesn’t mean the dominant group gets to choose what aspects of another group they want and disregard the rest. It means there is a mutual sharing of experiences between all groups.

RSH: Finally, what lessons were (or still need to be) learned as a result of the controversy?

JB: I would pose this question to the individuals at the School who were present during the Mirth & Girth episode; have we changed, and what did we learn from the incident? Is there a better relationship between the School and the African American community in Chicago? Are students more culturally competent and able to understand the sociological implications of race, identity and sexuality? I’m unable to answer this question completely since I was not present during this timeframe. I think there is a greater level of sophistication in how we would address something of that nature if it occurred today, but I think that may be more a result of our evolving pluralistic society and the skills we’ve acquired to communicate with each other, as opposed to something we’ve implemented as an institution.

I wonder how many of us have these conversations with our friends who share different cultural backgrounds from our own, or examined how heterogeneous/homogenous our circle of friends are and why? We don’t think about these things until a David Nelson or Jeremiah Wright moment occurs, but they were there all along. I would hope as a community we can have more honest dialogue with one another.

These discussions require knowledge beyond the cognitive level; emotional intelligence must be present too. Put your emotional intelligence to use the next time you have a conversation with someone. Before you start generating reasons why your point of view is correct and theirs is wrong, ask yourself, “Why does this person think this and what evidence supports their position?”

Every year I have African American students ask me how come we do not have more black students at the School. What I find interesting is that I never see the same number of non-black students asking me the same question. The point I’m making is that these issues have to be collective.

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ART NEWS shorts

By February 5, 2009 Uncategorized

By Joel Kuennen and Natalie Edwards

The Finch Migrates

The Finch Gallery will be closing its doors at the end of January and moving to NYC, but not before celebrating a fruitful two-year run with the “requisite” dance party.

The Finch started as a reaction to the “canned-beer art-parties and ego-driven shiny shows” which abound in Chicago. Opening in a decrepit space above a bowling alley, the founders traded renovating the space for its use and the Finch Gallery was born.

F Newsmagazine sat down with the SAIC alum Nicholas Freeman, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the gallery, to pick his brain about Finch Gallery, the art/gallery scene, Lacan, dance parties, and what comes next.

FN:    So what’s the story of The Finch Gallery? How’d it all start?

NF:    Canned-beer art-parties and ego-driven shiny shows seemed to be most of what my partner, Casey Murtaugh, and I encountered while looking at art in the city. We wanted to open a space that fit in between, a venue that focused on the work being made but not driven by its market viabilities. I worked a deal with the owner of the Fireside Bowl to let us open in the abandoned apartment above the bowling alley in exchange for the effort to renovate the space. This agreement also spurred us to form a nonprofit organization, so that the owner of the building could make a real property donation to us, writing the exchange off his taxes, and we, in turn could sustainably run the space with little annual overhead. This all worked great until we flooded the bowling alley bar with our stopped up toilet. We were then kicked out.

FN:    How would you characterize the art that The Finch shows?

NF:    We look to work with artists of all media, but focus on producing solo shows. Our purpose is to allow an artist the full opportunity to showcase not only their work, but the entire breadth of their idea. When we reopen in New York City this fall, I look to work more with performative and movement based art. Overall, we seek to provide a venue to artists whose work may prove difficult for other galleries to show.

FN:    You’re moving to New York at the end of the month and taking the gallery with you. What prompted the move?

NF:    Part of the move is personal, I’ve traveled quite a bit, but have always lived in Chicago; its time to get some fresh eyes. I bitched more than anybody about how everyone leaves here for the coasts, but after a few years of running this space, I decided that I needed to see how other independent galleries got down across the country. New York obviously is a vibrant conflux of new ideas but it is also a short jump to D.C., Philly, and Boston. I am interested in going and absorbing as much as possible in this next phase of the gallery, then returning to Chicago and doing things better.

FN:    What’s Next?

NF:    It’s all about playing with the idea of the frame. The Finch Gallery is to be going to turn into an “inside-out gallery”, operating on the street as opposed to within a static space. I’m interested in what The Stars did in China in the late 70’s by displaying their work directly to the people because the state wasn’t having it. I think that artists and the viewing public have always been under the thumb of one outside pressure or another; be it the Church, or the Salon, or now through the gallery owner circuit. If work serves a particular slant or has profitability, it will always have a public venue. We will continue to show work in a manner that helps bridge the esoteric divide between artist and audience and not play to the tune of the market. The Finch has always prided ourselves on being a socialist space (the name is derived from the most common species of bird), we don’t need some hot receptionist sitting behind a Mac in our gallery to legitimize us. We do so through shared experience with the people of our neighborhoods. Taking the gallery directly to the streets is a natural step.

FN:  As a small apartment gallery, how has the economic slow-down affected your gallery? Have you seen it affect the art scene here in general and do you anticipate it working against you in NY?

NF: Everybody is getting squeezed, but we never operated on sales so the art-market drop hasn’t affected us. Broke is broke. We’ve worked like this our whole lives, so it’s not much different. I feel like it’s an opportune time to go to NYC because while everyone craps themselves and pulls money out of the arts, I plan to hang tight, learn from the wealth of action in that town, and continue to grow the gallery and its mission so that when the world rights itself, we know best what to do with the funding when it begins to flow again.

FN: Education seems to be an integral part of your ultimate goal with this gallery project. How do you plan on incorporating it?

NF: A future endeavor for the gallery is to start an education program for high-school students. Basically, it’s a prep course for young artists designed to aid in portfolio development and to act as a heads-up for what’s coming to them if they go to art school. I think that arts education is bullshit, not that you can’t learn from the history and influence of your peers and faculty, but we are pushed through the system so quickly, that the tens of thousands of dollars you spend on your education is up and gone even before you develop the intellectual capacity to absorb all that you’re being exposed to. How is a 22 year old supposed to really make Lacanian theory a viable avenue of thought while they’re also grappling with the technical aspects of painting, let alone the inevitable experimentations of one’s youth? It’s too much, too fast, and all thrown at you before most students get to leave the country or even decide what their base role is as an artist. Our program is designed to help bolster the piss-poor high school arts education before the over-priced institutionalizing begins.

— JK

A Space-waster?

Of course everyone would like to have a huge functioning machine that runs just like a digestive system in their town, but only the people of Montreal have that luxury, at least until Valentine’s day. The Université du Québec’s art gallery has installed Wim Delvoye’s tower of digestion and excretion, upsetting the stomachs of tax-payers and enemies of poop smells. The “mouth” is fed twice daily with leftovers from the museum’s cafeteria, and the sphyncter opens up for a turd once a day. Of course, the steel, rubber and glass installation also releases a nauseating sulphuric gas, because any good sculptural representation of a digestive system must fart.

Delvoye claims that the installation is a reflection of the creative process and acknowledges the vulnerability of the sculpture’s meaning: in an art museum, Cloaca is art; in a garage, it is just an interesting machine. He also believes it doesn’t belong in a science museum.
Delvoye intentionally tried to make something absurdly unnecessary, but also claims to have created something to which everyone can relate. Everybody poops.— NE

Shake it like a Polaroid picture

The Polaroid Company has dumped the nostalgic analog film process that has long defined the Polaroid brand for a new, “modern” revision of instant film: a camera that spits out digital printed copies of the photo you just took. Not to worry, leave it to Netherlanders to rescue an American tradition. The Impossible Project, a company founded with the sole purpose of manufacturing the film that time might have forgotten, has purchased all the old Polaroid equipment and has signed a ten-year lease on the building that houses the equipment.  Look for the instant film to be available again by 2010.— NE

Ooh-Oh-Oh-Obama

Because nothing is sacred and irony will not ebb no matter how hard it is beaten with hope, an American writer living in London has written a musical called “Obama on My Mind,” a self-described “musical romp” that combines a disturbing array of musical genres, including “some motownish
stuff” and tango.

The Hen and Chickens Theatre in North London will run the show for three weeks in March, but an Obama character will not appear on stage. The play is set in a campaign office. This is not the only Obama musical, however. Another original musical ran in Kenya last November.— NE

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Assessing the Assessment: Grades at SAIC

By January 30, 2009 Uncategorized

photo courtesy of Ed Uthman

By Morgan Gliedman

Like many of us here at SAIC, I was first attracted to this school because of the interdisciplinary education, mind-blowing course catalog, and world-renown facilities. Prior to admittance to the MFAW program, I had mixed feelings about the possibility of being in a school that had Credit/No Credit as opposed to a more traditional letter grading system; coming from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, where we did receive letter grades (and they often seemed arbitrary or superficial, especially in experimental classes), I was ultimately excited by the opportunity to work and grow in a school where my creative endeavors would be assessed through a more substantive system than numbers or letters on a transcript. As a member of the Writing Program who asked to be anonymous explained, “Not having grades means that the exchange between professors and students can be more democratic…This encourages more risk and more daring choices in the work itself…the problems are sometimes students have been trained to be motivated by grades so they may have to assign new investment incentives for their work.

This sentiment was echoed by several of the teachers and students I spoke with, as was Chair of the Photo Department Barbara DeGenevieve’s sentiment that, “the real world doesn’t give grades for doing what you’re supposed to do.” DeGenevieve added, “There will always be people around you who aren’t pulling their weight, but grades are a rather juvenile form of motivation and reward,”

The crux of the conundrum seems to be that while the majority of our 2,333 undergraduates and 602 grad students are incredibly passionate about their work, and it is often impossible to objectively assess art, there is also an undercurrent of laziness, a perceived lack of motivation, which undermines the experiences of those dedicated students who feel that it is unfair to receive the same grade as students who slack off and don’t even bother to show up to class. SAIC Student Betsy Yaros says, “The lack of grades fails…there is lack of motivation. I’ve met quite a few undergrads who are here on their parents’ money, are f–ing around, doing drugs, and producing crap. I think the grades may make people have to drop out sooner, and I wouldn’t mind if the lazy people left.”

This was reinforced by undergraduate student Aaron Greene, who in his first year at SAIC has already experienced a vast discrepancy between the quality of education and exchange of ideas in a class where he felt the teacher demanded a lot of the students, versus a class where it seemed like very little was required to pass the class. “Our grading system” Greene explained, “isn’t necessarily the reason, but I think teachers need to hold us to a higher standard, and from what I’ve seen, when teachers require more of us we step up to the plate…it’s discouraging to be in a class with people who aren’t putting in the same effort.”

“If you do better” asked Mike Genge, a second-year student in the Architecture and Designed Objects department, “shouldn’t you receive the affirming reinforcement of a good grade? One that would be better than the kid that drools while he sleeps during critiques?”

This issue is especially thorny when thinking about collaborative projects, where Nadine Bopp, adjunct professor in the AIADO and Liberal Arts departments explains, “there is often a backlash from those who excel and work diligently about those who slide by with the minimum or less than average work.”

Perhaps this is an issue inherent in all learning environments, especially in an interdisciplinary art school where conceptual, experimental thinking can at times have the unintended result of scattered interest rather than deeper learning and understanding. Alum Jack Bornoff, who received his MFA at SAIC in 1976, defends our grading system, saying, “Please keep in mind, SAIC has been named the number one art school in the United States for the past fifteen years and the most influential art school of the past decade.” But while there is no doubt about our student body’s potential for excellence, one does need to acknowledge that, according to some individuals I spoke with who have been involved with SAIC for several decades, things seem to be changing for the worse. Gregory Mowery, who first came to SAIC in 1977 as a grad student and now teaches in the Art+Tech department, praises the school’s incredible range of course offerings, range of ideas, and diversity of faculty, but acknowledges a recent shift in the student body’s overall commitment. “When I was in school” remembers Mowery, “it was too conceptual with not enough craft…I’ve noticed what seemed to be a sudden shift in what I perceived as a student failing (or my failing). Things I had been doing forever didn’t work anymore. [Previously] pass out a syllabus, make a schedule, and stuff would get done. [Recently] I would schedule a midterm and people wouldn’t even show up! It finally occurred to me that there was a profound generational shift. My generation thrived (or at least thought we did) on personal freedom…this generation multitasks but doesn’t synthesize well.”

If attendance is the very minimum required to pass—and from what I gathered in my interview process, teachers and students both seem to agree that credit at SAIC is about showing up, and it seems like it would take more effort to fail than to pass—then attendance guidelines need to be more strictly enforced, though, as Nadine Bopp explains, it is not always accepted when a professor decides that a student has not met the requirements to receive credit. “More recently,” explains Bopp, “I have had to give no credit. This is extremely difficult as the student fights you every step. They get their parents involved, department heads, administrators etc. Unless we can completely document every misstep of the student, it is often easier to cave than to fight over a prolonged period of time. However, depending on the student, some will acknowledge their mistakes and lack of effort and accept the NC.”

Perhaps a more nuanced assessment scale should be put into place, where at the beginning of each semester a student and teacher would work together to specifically map out a student’s intended goals for each course, with more opportunity throughout the semester for rigorous, thoughtful self-assessment. Raja Halwani, Chair of the Liberal Arts department, suggests a “more finessed system than the binary CR/NCR,” of high pass, pass, low pass, and no pass. Other suggestions include giving letter grades to each specific assignment and then mathematically calculating the student’s average at the end of the semester to see if he or she met the threshold for receiving credit, having different departments come up with different grading perimeters that would be tailored to their field, giving unofficial grades throughout the semester, and having more consistently rigorous critiques that challenge the students to assess how well they have met their goals for each project. Regardless of where this debate ultimately takes us, I think that we should all devote a few minutes at the start of this new semester to think about why we are here, what we want to accomplish, and how we will do it.

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"Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters"

By January 28, 2009 Uncategorized

Art that commemorates the life and work of Dr. King, and explores the struggle for social justice today

by Brandon Kosters

Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters, a show hosted by Hostelling International Chicago that features murals thematically based on the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr., opened the evening of January 19, 2009. The murals were painted by ten SAIC students: Britni Marii Ashe; Emily Cross; Jiwan Jung; Minjung Kim; Vanessa Miethe Hoff; Des’Tina Paige; Ryan Pfeffier; Young-Mee Roh; Jae Eun Song; and Annie Sutula.

Arielle Semmel, the education program counselor for Hostelling International Chicago, said that her belief is that Hostelling International is driven by many of the same principals that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated. The goal of Hostelling International, she says, is to bring people of multiple ethnicities, religions, languages and cultures together to promote tolerance and a peaceful co-existence among citizens of the global community. “By sharing these murals with the community that stays here at the hostel, and with the community in Chicago,” she said,”[we are] hoping to spark that dialogue, and get people talking about what it is that we are working on.”

Each artist faced the task of segmenting his or her image into three sections, and then painting their mural directly onto three vertically aligned windowpanes. While the dimensions of each mural were identical, the imagery and aesthetic of every mural was unique to the sensibility of the artist who produced it.

For some, concept directly informed the imagery. Artist Des’Tina Paige said she, “wanted to create a timeline. I wanted to express not just what Martin Luther King did, but what others have done, before him and up until now.” In the top panel of her mural, we see a cloud with the “Until justice…” phrase written into it. In the middle panel, raindrops are seen falling from the cloud onto an image of Dr. King, who is painted in the bottom panel. Within each rain cloud is information written about a significant historical event pertaining to the civil rights movement. “It’s kind of like justice is still rolling down on him, and he can see that in Heaven.”

For some of the artists, considerations of the medium played a more influential role in the development of the imagery. Artist Emily Cross said that the project,” was hard because I didn’t know how to [work with] the medium on the glass, so that kind of dictated some things for me,” and that she had to “work with the layering of it all.” Vanessa Miethe Hoff said that one of the most rewarding parts of the process was the “physical process of painting on a window. I don’t usually paint on windows.”

Artist Annie Sutula referenced photographs for her mural. In the bottom panel, images are depicted from the infamous Little Rock Nine Crisis, when a group of nine African American students had to fight to gain entrance to what was, prior to the Brown VS. Board of Education ruling, an exclusively white school in Arkansas. In the middle panel, proponents of desegregation are seen marching in the streets “to signify the work that was going on.” Sutula went on to say, “The top [panel] depicts a student today reaching above all of this and writing the phrase ‘the fierce urgency of now’ on a blackboard. This is to recognize that even though we’ve come a long way in terms of education, we still have a long ways to go.”

Every artist seemed to extract something valuable from the experience. Artist Britni Marii Ashe said that the process of executing a mural of her own was incredibly rewarding, and she plans on doing more murals in the future. She said, “Public art is important to me. I’m learning more about it and getting more into it just in the city of Chicago…Here, it’s great exposure, it’s a great way to get out a message, and to work with people too…that’s also fun.”

Artist Jae Eun Song, a graduate student who is originally from New Zealand, is very excited about having participated in the mural project, and to be in Chicago to bear witness to the radical social changes that are occurring. She said that said that she “learned about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement back in high school…I didn’t know that there was a day to commemorate his work,” and she felt that, as a painter, it was “very meaningful” for her to participate in the event.

As Arielle said, “tomorrow our country is going to inaugurate the first president who happens to be African-American, and you hear on the news all the time, the question [now] is is the race question in America fixed? And obviously, it isn’t. We have a lot of work to do, and that’s the work that Dr. King called us to do. That’s the work that our artists have been helping us do.”

The show is on display until March 31, 2009, at Hostelling International Chicago (24 East Congress Parkway). For more information, contact Arielle Semmel at [email protected].

Camera by Brandon Kosters and Emma James
Music and Video editing by Brandon Kosters

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