The Age of Exploration: Up River, April 2-5, 2010

A homemade, two person, tide and paddle powered vessel is scheduled to set off today on the Hudson River at Tivoli, NY and head north to the Troy dam.  On board the vessel will be artist Marie Lorenz and curator Diana Stevenson as a project by Lorenz called Up River and represents Stevenson's thesis which is part of the Spring line up of Bard Curatorial Studies Thesis Exhibitions.  A new round of graduate exhibitions open on Sunday, April 11 from 1-4pm.
Between today and April 5, the pair will be posting photos taken along the exploration on an hourly basis.  One can subscribe to the trips rss feed plugging into one's url:  http://www.marielorenz.com/inprogress/?cat=25&feed=rss2 , into your feed reader.  One may also choose to follow along on the Up River page of the artist's website.  There is also a facebook fan page for the project.
This project is a more subdued and, I expect, precise endeavor than Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea which barrelled down the river in 2008.
The duo will give a lecture and slide show on the expedition on May 6, 2010 at 7:30 at the Tivoli Town Hall in Tivoli, NY.

Looking back: Opening Ceremony for Olafur Eliasson's Parliament of Reality, May 16, 2009 at Bard College

We arrived at Bard in time to catch the afternoon session of the opening program laid out for Olafur Eliasson's permanent installation at Bard College The Parliament of Reality on May 16, 2009.

The site of the installation had changed greatly since I was last there in March. Having the "after, after the before gave me quick thrill. Defying the expectations set by the extravagance of some costly public art, the island is rather bland. This blandness also defies the expectations raised by much of this artist's other work and I think it should work well for the project as a whole going forward. This is no grand experiment in the tweaking of sensory perception. The work was created as a point of intellectual exchange, to facilitate social  gatherings and provoke debate.  It's an open air lecture hall, an academy in an approximation of the original sense: a venue where intellectual dialogue might be paired with the enhanced sensory input of exposure to the elements of nature.  This work is not apparently ostentatious (aside from creating a body of a water where there once was none in the middle of a grassy meadow). But this is sort of feature has been de riguer for upwardly mobile backyards for years, and in fact if this was in someone's back yard, there'd be the added feature a gazebo perched atop the island.  The swirling stainless steel canopy spanning the bridge is the only apparent glitz adorning the work.  This is a table, set simply, for the discurssive banquets to be held there. The work is also not complete. The plantings are new and will take several years of growth to ground the work to its site. Young trees belt the piece on the outer side of the moat. Standing on the disc. I tried to envision the effect that the fully mature trees would have on the space, anchoring it in place among broader environs.  Surely the plantings maturity will strengthen the geometry of the site and lend a sense of sheltered glade or nearly natural amphitheater. I imagine that in years to come this growth will provide the sensation of passing through an aperture as one passes over the bridge to the stone paved plaza of the island.  The island is paved in an arrangement such that the grout lines trace concentric geometric forms originating from a central cirucular stone with culminating in alignment of the cardinal points. The disc is ringed by seating in the form of large, irregular boulders.

CCS Director Tom Eccles kicking off the afternoon.

The afternoon session kicked off with a performance orchestrated by Andrea Zittel. The performance entailed four individuals tracing a square in, meeting one another at points along this square then turning back, all set to a pulsing soundtrack of a crushing, electric drone. There was something ceremonial, in an ancient way, in work. The repeated movements and the posture of the performers brought to mind lines of Irish step dancing - without that pasttime's more insidious traits.  I was anxious to see what Zittel had come up with as I have not seen to performance.  It was spartan and exhilarating.

Above and below:  moments from the performance by Andrea Zittel.

Following Zittel's piece, Molly Nesbit, professor of Art History at Vassar did a reading that spoke of the parliament and actions as a form of voting. She linked Eliasson's piece with a history of democratic gatherings in the region that predate Woodstock. I don't doubt the substantial content of her talk, but much of what she said gained little traction on the wagon trail track of my mind. At the end of her talk in an experiment of promoting an impromptu parliament, levelling the field amongst presentor and audience, she passed the microphone around to garner thoughts and responses from the entire group.

Professor Molly Nesbit giving her talk.

The microphone continued traveling through the gathered group before and after the final speaker, German philosopher, Pieter Slojterdijk. For me the most stirring words of the afternoon came from Sloterdijk, German Philosopher who spoke on the nature of reality by enumerating three human engineered projects that could well have huge impact on the perception of reality in the future.

 Pieter Slojterdijk

He enumerated three "clients" that could irrevocably alter humanity's tie to that which is considered "reality".

The first of his "clients" as he called them is Cern, which having recoved from damage incurred from defects in the facility's inaugural test last year is now ready to continue its exploratory work of observing the most elemental building blocks of the univers. The results of which could be (although infinitesimally small) creating a black hole and possibly bringing about the end of Physics as a discipline of experimental research. As the crowd giggled as Sloterdijk described the possible nature and progression of a man made black hole, I felt a bit of the ironic portense that is built up in a disaster movie as if we tempting fate in some 19th Century way. "OOhooh, men, flying in the air? preposterous!" Wonderfully creepy.

Sloterdijk's second client, is ETA, the ongoing attempt to create nuclear fusion of a sun-like intensity in a facility in the South of France. Paraphrasing Sloterdijk's imagining of the earth's epitaph: Born as a planet, it longed to be a star.

The final example cited was the International Space Station, the emblematic container of humanity's hopes for cosmologicol colonialism and our species' post-earth survival. How will our view of reality be shifted when life as we have known it, fully entangled in the fiberof its terrestrial host, is cast out into the void, expelled from our hospitable eartlhy womb?

Eliasson floated among the gathering, passing the mic, seeking to engender debate with the possibility of laying down the conversational ethos that would mark the tone of the place's future activities. Much of the talk leaned toward conjuring the practical out of the theoretical, making relevant the workings of this space.  The earnestness for affecting the world is always highly palpable at such events and virtually never actionable.

Olafur Eliasson on the mic.

Artist and writer Carol Diehl on the mic.

At one point, while I was standing on the edge of the island, I experienced a sensation that the disc was teetering slightly.  That of vertigo passed, but later as Eliasson was speaking about democratice structures and the idea of discourse and exchange, I realized the previous sensation was grasping at unconcious memory that offered an uncanny analogy to the structure of the piece and the idea of an arena for intellectual sparring:

How exciting!

The poles of high culture discourse and life or death contest are not as distant as the struggle between Flash and the Baron might suggest.  Sometime before the official opening of Parliament of Reality, a group of drunken students were apparently inspired to physical feats mischief, attempting to jettison one of the large boulders into the water, resulting in one student losing several fingers.

Though still nascent, the frogs have already claimed the space as their own. The moat of a pond is inhabited by tons of fat tadpoles. The conversations on the island was periodically accented with the oddly mechanized call of frogs resing on the bridge's canopy. The frogs' barking complimented the soundtrack of Zittel's work in such an uncanny way I, at first, believed it to be an additional sound piece.

Toward the end of the afternoon a man was complimenting Eliasson on his work and waxing rhapsodic about about how the artist's creations, the present one included, are breaking down walls, creating an egalitarian, democratic experience for all. I for one think that walls get a bum rap, and, for the record, I stand in praise of the good that a good wall can do....Robert Frost not withstanding.

In fact I sense that when the trees surrounding the feature mature, they will form a wall of sorts, buffering the island from the broader surroundings, enhancing the form and function of the piece.

It struck me as exceedingly funny and ironic that this man's praise of the demolishing of barriers was given while sitting on the only formation that is more exclusionary and divisive than a wall:  an island. 

Parliament of Reality opening program at Bard College, May 16, 2009

Bard has released the proposed schedule of presentations and performances to mark the opening of Olafur Eliasson's Parliament of Reality on Saturday, May 16.
It'll be an all day affair. From the press release:

On Saturday, May 16, Olafur Eliasson will lead an international group of scholars and artists in a series of presentations and performances devoted to our use of space, architecture, art, and design. Participants include: Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University; Lars Lerup, Dean and William Ward Watkin Professor of Architecture, Rice University; Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art, Vassar College; Felicity Scott, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Columbia University; Peter Sloterdijk, Rektor, Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe; Andrea Zittel, artist; and Olafur Eliasson.

Proposed schedule
Morning session: 10:30 - 12:30

10:30 - 11:00 am Opening remarks by Tom Eccles
11:00 - 11:20 am Felicity Scott
11:20 - 11:40 am Lars Lerup
11:40 - 12:00 am Peter Galison
12:00 - 12:30 pm Olafur Eliasson/roundtable with morning participants/open discussion

12:30 - 2:30 pm lunch

Afternoon session: 2:30 - 5:00 p.m.

2:30- 3:00 pm Andrea Zittel/performance (only Andrea and performers on island)
3:00 - 3:20 pm Molly Nesbit
3:20 - 3:40 pm Peter Sloterdijk
3:40 - 4:40 pm Olafur Eliasson/rountable
4:40 - 5:00 pm Open discussion

All events are free and open to the public. Additional funding for the inaugural events has been provided by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Osher Foundation.

For further information, call 845.758.7598, e-mail ccs@bard.edu, or visit http://www.bard.edu/ccs.
10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Location: The parliament of reality island
Contact: 845-758-7598
E-mail: ccs@bard.edu
Website: http://www.bard.edu/ccs

In case you're planning on heading up for the opening, here's a map of the work's location on the Bard campus. This particular satellite image depicted in the map is an old one - at least 3 or 4 years old - Pre Hessel Museum construction.

The Merry Month of May(kr)

May: a month so full of new and exciting possibilities that they just had to name it after this blog.

Storm King has awakened for the season and on May 9 will officially open Maya Lin's new Wavefield to the public. The third of a series of such earth works created by Lin, Wavefield is a four acre array of grass laden waves. Last fall the work seemed to be fully formed, but had only irregular patches of grass on the peaks and valleys and muddy tire tracks from the earth moving equipment still traced their way around the entire area. An accompanying exhibit of Lin's work is on view inside the park's gallery.
Here is Holland Cotter's NY Times write up of Wavefield (5/8/09)

The weekend of May 16 and 17 has several things going on.
That weekend essentially marks the sixth anniversary of the opening of Dia:Beacon (the museum opened on May 18, 2003). On the 16th, Dia:Beacon will be hosting the final Merce Cunningham Dance Company's event in the company's two year residency at the museum. As with all the other MCDC's events before it, this performance sold out quickly, so if you have no ticket by now, you still won't have one on the day of the event. I have not yet seen any last minute scalpers standing outside the museum hawking any extra tickets.
Also on that weekend, the museum will be opening a new exhibit of work by Antoni Tàpies "The Resources of Rhetoric" which is installed in the galleries that formerly housed multiple exhibits of Agnes Martin's work since the Riggio Galleries opened in 2003. The selection of Tàpies strikes me as a little odd, but I'm very interested in seeing it in relation to the museum's other work. The exhibit is the first in a series of institutional exchanges between Dia and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. Tàpies' work will be on view through Oct 19, 2009.

May 15-17 marks the first of several weekends that Mike and Doug Starn's Big Bambú project will be open to the public. Between 11 am and 4 pm on each of those days, visitors are welcome to come by and see the work. If you're planning to visit, you are asked to send an email to the studio. The email address and driving directions are on the Starn's website. Big Bambú will be open to the public every 2nd and 4 weekend in June, July and August.

Also on the 16, Olafur Eliasson's Parliament of Reality officially opens on the campus of Bard College. Eliasson will be facilitating a series of presentations and symposia which are scheduled to happen on the island forum he's designed. I caught a glimpse of the permanent installation when it was under construction earlier this Spring.
As part of the opening activities, a conference is scheduled for the 15th on the use of music as instrument of torture will be led by the Human Rights Project at Bard.The opening events are free and open to the public.
I'll post schedule information when it comes available.

CCS Bard with Art 21 presents Teaching and Learning with Contemporary Art Professional Development Workshop Series.

CCS Bard is teaming up with Art21 to offer a professional development program workshop for educators to "incorporate contemporary art into other areas of academic study." This series has 3 parts, and the fee is $120, the first part is scheduled to happen on March 25, so if you're interested, you'll have to move quickly. Call 845.758.7874 for more info. More details can be found in the press release.

The first program in the series, “Workshop 1: Learning about Contemporary Art (Object and Media-Based learning),” will be presented on Wednesday, March 25, 4–7 p.m., in conjunction with In a Room Anything Can Happen, an exhibition of the Marieluise Hessel Collection. Starting with an introduction to the materials, methods, and sites where contemporary artists are working today, this workshop will focus on ways to explore contemporary art in a museum or gallery context, as well as strategies for bringing web and video resources into the classroom and methods for actively engaging students in video and online resources for research.

The second workshop in the series, “Workshop 2: Media-based Workshop,” will be presented in the CCS Bard Library and Archives on Friday, April 24, 5–8 p.m. This workshop introduces a media-based approach to teaching and learning about contemporary art using Art21 video and web resources in the classroom. Participants will explore some of the ways theses messages are created and the different roles that producers and audiences play in interpreting media and visual art.

“Workshop 3: Merging Form and Content” will explore how artists utilize particular materials, technical skills, and working processes to convey big ideas. The program takes place on Sunday, May 17, from 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Using the Art21 series as a starting point, the program will explore the work of a number of different artists as well as examine specific works of art and online resources to inspire curricular ideas for teaching. Participants will explore how to create content-driven curricula that addresses big ideas and meaningful themes, as well as ways of teaching technical skills, choosing materials, and utilizing formal art vocabulary with students. Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will be at CCS Bard for this workshop to discuss the inauguration his new work, the parliament of reality, a new, permanent, outdoor installation created specifically for the Bard College campus.

Destination Art: Olafur Eliasson at Bard College

Olafur Eliasson, visualization of The Parliament of Reality, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
© Studio Olafur Eliasson. via artdaily.org
Olafur Eliasson's first permanent installation in the United States is scheduled to open on the campus of Bard College on May 16, 2009. The work titled Parliament of Reality is located near the Richard B. Fisher Center of Performing Arts Center. The $1.2 million project has been commissioned for Bard by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard and is funded by the Luma Foundation
From the Press Release issued by Bard College:

The Parliament of Reality consists of a circular pond approximately 135 feet in diameter surrounded by a ring of 24 planted trees. Nestled in the center of the pond is a circular island, paved with individual stones that inscribe a twelve-point pattern derived from the meridian lines of nautical charts and the compass. The island is accessed via a stone bridge covered by a steel latticework tunnel. Based on the island’s floor, the tunnel’s design is composed of a series of ellipses, which gradually intensify toward the point where the bridge and island meet. As visitors cross the bridge, the tunnel’s design appears to gradually shift, providing a symbolic temporal experience evocative of the work’s overall conceptual goals. Large, smooth boulders situated in two rows around the outer rim of the island provide seating.

Eliasson notes that the “Icelandic parliament is called the Althing, meaning: a space for all things.” He envisions this project as “a place where students, teachers, and visitors can gather to relax, discuss ideas, or have an argument.” Eliasson states that the project “emphasizes that negotiation should be at the core of any educational scheme. It is only by questioning what one is taught that real knowledge is produced and a critical attitude can be sustained.”

In early March I snapped a couple of photos of the installation site as work progressed. Above, you can see shimmering facade of the Gehry designed Fisher Center beyond the construction site.

Eye Candy Friday: Uh Omer

This weekend's selection is CNN Concatenated, 2002, a work by Omer Fast. The pause/inhalations make this work for me.

Fast is among the artists whose work is included in A/V heavy exhibit "The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art", opening at the Hessel Museum at Bard College on Sept 27, 2008. There's an opening reception for the exhibit on the 27th from 1-4pm.
Hito Steyerl will be giving a lecture titled "Documentary Uncertainty" at 2pm on the day of the opening.
The following day, Sept 28, from 1:30-2:30, a panel discussion, "Problems of Realism" will be held featuring TJ Demos, Carles Guerra and Hito Steyerl.
On Oct 4, at 1pm, Andrea Geyer will be giving a performative slide lecture in Weis Cinema, located at the Bard Campus Center.

The Greenroom will be on exhibit through Feb 1 2009.

mini round up

Richard Bruce's work is included in a group exhibit called "East West Dialogues: mysticism, Satire and the Legendary Past" curated by Dr. Layla S. Diba at the LTMH Gallery located at 39 E 78 St in NY. The exhibit opened on Wednesday night and will continue through June 27.

I have work included in a exhibit on view through May 30 at the Bard CCS Library at Bard College.
Curated by Tom Eccles, the group exhibit, "Observed and Considered" also includes work by Mark DeLura, Peter Acheson, and Daniel Berlin. A few images of the work on display are at my personal blog.

Coming up next week, two evenings of screenings will be held on May 27 & 28 at the New Museum as an introduction of an upcoming exhibit at Bard CSS called The Greenroom.

...The Greenroom, a large-scale exhibition exploring the "documentary turn"
within recent contemporary art practice and its heritage in relation to the
history of film, documentary photography, and television. Set to open in Fall
2008 at the The Hessel Museum of Art and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard
College, The Greenroom, curated by CCS Bard graduate program director Maria
Lind, will feature works by more than forty artists and extend beyond the
exhibition format to include a long-term research project and related
publications. The research project is a collaboration between The Center
for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and the artist and theoretician Hito
Steyerl.These preview screenings, organized by curatorial assistant and CCS Bard
graduate student Fionn Meade, include selected works from artists participating
in The Greenroom exhibition.This event is co-sponsored by the Vera List Center
for Art and Politics at The New School and the Center for Curatorial Studies at
Bard College.

The screenings will be held at The New School, Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th Street (enter at 66 West 12th Street), 5th Floor, between 5th and 6th Avenues, NY.
Admission:$8, free for all students, as well as New School and CCS Bard faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID, and members of the New School.For more information, please call CCS Bard at 845.758.7598, write ccs@bard.edu, or visit www.bard.edu/ccs.
Information on the line ups for both evenings are posted here.

Via The Cultivated Home, we learn that Kathy Moss has work in a group show called Nature: Themes and Variations which will be opening tomorrow at Argazzi Art in Lakeville CT. 22 Millerton Rd (Rte 44) Lakeville, CT; 860 435 8222. The reception is happening from 4-7pm and the exhibit runs through July 1. Kathy is also included in the Flourish, a group exhibit on view now at Robischon Gallery in Denver, through June 21.

Joan Mellon, who had a lovely solo exhibit at ParaSite back in April 2006, will have work in a group show called No Chromophobia at OK Harris Gallery. No Chromophobia opens on Tuesday, June 3, from 5-7. The exhibit will run through July 11 and after a hiatus will continue from Sept. 2-6.

Speaking of Chromophobia, Kirsten Kucer mentioned that after having read the book in our book club, she's been seeing references to it all over, whether explicit or by default. David Batchelor was recently featured in a couple of talks held at the Tate Modern, one on his work, and the other, a panel discussion on the subject of white. Both are available on iTunes, or through the Tate's website. I was very interested in hearing both discussions, but if my memory serves, either one or both were rather dry. Batchelor mentioned he is set to release a new book which will be a collection of writings by various artists on the subject of color.

Tacita Dean Talk and Screening at Bard College, May 14

I understand that Tacita Dean will be giving a talk and screening two of her films at the Weiss Cinema located on the campus of Bard College. The two films to be screened are "A Bag of Air"(1995) & "Mario Merz"(2002) The program is scheduled for Wed, May 14 from 5:30-7:30. The Weiss Cinema is located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center.

This program is presented in conjunction with the CCS Bard exhibition Another
Time, curated by Milena Hoegsberg as part of her master's thesis project. Tacita
Dean's work "Kodak" was featured in the exhibition that was on view from April
11-27, 2008.
This event is made possible by a generous grant from the Beudert Foundation.

I received the information via email from Milena although I haven't been able to find any listing or information about the talk online. If you're looking for information about the talk, I suggest calling the Bard CCS office at 845.758.7598.