Transitional Digital Objects will be shown on the UAMO Festival 2011 in Munich

I received an email from the UAMO festival stating that "Transitional Digital Objects (my MA project) has been selected to be shown on the UAMO Festival 2011 in Munich within the festival screenings.

The UAMO festival takes place from 27.10.2011 - 30.10.2011 in Munich.

For more information about UAMO [Urban Art and Media Organisation], please check the following link: www.uamo.info

walid raad at the whitechapel gallery

Whitechapel gallery is currently exhibiting the artwork of Lebanese artist Walid Raad, who mainly works with photographs and videos, in contexts relating to narratives and archiving, history and hysteria...

I attended his interview at the gallery, a pleasant talk, where he discussed the photographic images and what they record and issues like image portraying a truth or resembling a reality? he says that he likes how camera acted as a permission to go to places (sometimes at risk), and to closed meetings to describe his beginnings and involvement with the political scene in Lebanon and the Middle East, he then speaks about the shift of the resistance from leftist (communist specifically) to Islamist, then back to photography and objects in photos that function as optical unconscious, for instance an unregistered ashtray in the background of an image was not meant to be there, and that later on serves the psychic comfort. A chapter of the interview is then dedicated to how Art and Culture are affected by the 'Surpassing Disaster'theory, to know more about the theory one should read Jalal Toufic's book (should do that myself), and finally one last part is a critique of the Art scene in the Arab world, 'what we are doing in the Arab world is just countering Orientalism', to defy the museums opening in Abu Dhabi for instance, Raad imagines a shrinking artwork, what happens if the artwork, on its way to the museum, shrinks? what will happen with the museum? will shrink as well? how will the museum deal with a photograph that just lost all its colors? I had questions in regard to this specific matter, whether the artist was talking about an actual physical shrinking or whether it's a compressed digital file or just an image size reduction. In the gallery's website, this is what I found:

"Upon their arrival in Lebanon all the works scheduled for a major retrospective are found to have miraculously shrunk to one hundredth of their original size.

These are just some of the stories that accompany the photographic and video works produced by Raad in his various art projects: as founder and member of The Atlas Group, as both instigator and executor of a series of self-posed photo assignments, and as a contemporary artist who claims via telepathic powers to communicate with artists from the future."

The show is entitled 'Miraculous Beginnings' and features a lot of his work over the past 20 years.

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/walid-raad-miraculous-beginnings#

kx culture: stories/images/sounds

Central Saint Martins is moving to King's Cross next year; the university throws a celebration in Lethaby Gallery on Southampton Row, telling stories of the industrial aspect of that area, showing videos and photographs of present time kings' cross and how it is being redeveloped and footage of this area in the time.

In their official website, the university states that "for more than 150 years, King’s Cross has been a source of inspiration for visual artists. From Wyndham Lewis and Victor Pasmore and more recently Mike Leigh to Cornelia Parker, the area has been the counterpoint for a rich and diverse plateau of work, often reflecting moments of transition in an artist’s life." Personally, I never had the chance to really explore the area for every time I am there, I will be carrying hand luggage and preparing to either take the train to France or go back home.

Many participant artists were showing the work, among them:

Marc Atkins, Phil Baines, D-Fuse, Graham Hudson, Isaac Julien, and many more...

I really enjoyed Pathways: Kings Cross by D-fuse, which is usually shown in a 3D environment, only the modest venue this time could only afford to play the video as a regular projection.

Oral history recordings, shots from old films, new shots re-enacting old scenes in present time, all is brought together in a docu-fiction that even explains the process of screening the film at some points.

Pathways:Kings Cross from D-Fuse on Vimeo.

107 women is too much women.

In Sophie Calle’s images, texts, videos, in brief narratives, she exposes her private experience to the collective. In the exhibition running at the Whitechapel Gallery Prenez soin de vous or Take Care of Yourself, she invites 107 women from different professions to decode an email in which her lover breaks up with her. The reactions were very much different; each is interpreting in her own way. In general the idea of this exhibition was appealing to me, but when I started plunging into the artworks, I realized that I was thinking about the artist’s lover, what would be his reaction when he discovers this parade happening all around him? I thought of how far in intimacy would artists go showcasing their personal life. Sophie Calle’s approach is always a push to the extreme, I was annoyed by the bombardment of the women’s judgments, I sympathized with the artist's lover and pitied the artist.

1W13 Damien Hirst's No Love Lost

With the will to return to his 'solitary practice of painting', Damien Hirst reveals a series of 'Blue Paintings' at the Wallace Collection, a family assortment always displaying old paintings, furniture, porcelain, armour, and sculptures in their villa like museum.

Hirst’ theme of mortality is portrayed through a series of blue painted floating skulls, framed with classical wooden edges, placed against wallpaper covered walls in between the Wallace Collection’s rooms and corridors.

A ‘radical departure’ from the artist’s established working practice’, Hirst is figuring out new ways of showcasing his artworks. For me, this exhibit demonstrates how an artwork could be imposed on a museum instead of being displayed in a museum.

Jill Magid's 'Authority to Remove'

Yesterday I had the chance to go see the ‘Authority to Remove’ exhibition by Jill Magid, an American artist showing in Tate modern. I have read some time last year about her projects, she usually plays around challenging technology into sensuality, using spy cameras, videos, texts, emails on intranets, narratives, performances… to engage the systems in romantic journeys, juggling between the profile of artist, surveillance subject and surveyor. Pretty political, she questions issues of identity, power, protection, and trust… this show is a one-time-only exhibition due to censorship reasons (Authority to remove was a commissioned project originally).

Below are links related to Jill’s artwork:
www.jillmagid.net
www.evidencelocker.net
www.lincoln-ocean-victor-eddy.net
www.systemazure.com

And this project’s link is the following:
www.becomingtarden.net