Speaking of narrative(s)....

Two pretty interesting exhibition press releases came across my desk today from E-flux.  Worth a glance, to be sure.

Kelani Abass, Olori Nlado, from the “Calendar” series, 2013. Corrugated cardboard, laminated print & acrylic on canvas, 99 cm x 122 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Kelani Abass
Àsìkò: Evoking Personal Narratives and Collective History
www.ccalagos.org

Huseyin Bahri Alptekin, Self-Heterotopia, Catching Up with Self, 2009. Photo: Peter Cox.

Once Upon a Time… The Collection Now
www.vanabbemuseum.nl

Video/Photo Exhibition in Germany Explores Constructions of Self/Identity

Johanna Reich, Kassandra, 2008. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013. Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt.

Per Speculum Me Video

Frankfurter Kunstverein

www.fkv.de

A press release on e-flux describes the exhibition as bringing together,

"works by nine artists who explore the construction of the self in contemporary video art and photography. Sounding like a long-forgotten magical spell, the Latin title of the exhibition underscores that self-perception and the development of the ego are coupled with the recognition of one’s own image in the mirror.

Closed-circuit installations and self-portraits have always played a central role throughout the 50-year history of video art, as a reflection on the standpoint of the viewer or as an epistemic question of identity. Today, the daily production and dissemination of moving self-portraits have become the norm in everyday life and in social networks. As a result, new questions have emerged for many video artists surrounding the visual constitution of a subject or its counterpart as well as the perception of the self in a moving image. The exhibited art works therefore offer deciphering gazes at the self and its mirror image."

Participating artists: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Martin Brand, Manuela Kasemir, Sabine Marte, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Barbara Probst, Johanna Reich, Eva Weingärtner and Gilda Weller

Curated by Holger Kube Ventura

The exhibition is part of the B3 Parcours.

Rebecca Norris Webb @ Southeast Museum of Photography

Rebecca Norriw Webb, Badlands

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB
My Dakota

"In 2005, I set out to photograph my home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, coyotes, mule deer, ring-necked pheasants, and prairie dogs than people. It's a landscape dominated by space and silence and solitude, by brutal wind and extreme weather. I was trying to capture a more intimate and personal view of the West. I was trying to capture what all that space feels like to someone who grew up there. A year into the project, however, everything changed. One of my brothers died unexpectedly. For months, one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota. It seemed all I could do was drive through the badlands and prairies and photograph. I began to wonder: Does loss have its own geography?" - Rebecca Norris Webb
  
October 18, 2013 - February 2, 2014
 
Artist Talk, Book Signing and Opening Reception:
Friday, October 18, 6:00-8:00 pm

Southeast Museum of Photography  
1200 W. International Speedway Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114

Click HERE for more information.

50 Great Works of Video Art...

...that you can watch online.  I absolutely LOVE it when my students direct me to such useful spaces on the internet (thank you, Haley Bowen).  As the article says, "This collection should serve as a compact introduction to video art for anyone who’s uninitiated or a handy compilation for anyone who loves the medium but has some trouble finding the good stuff online."

Click HERE to access the page with video links.

Final post in fototazo's "How to Start a Project"

Mark Steinmetz

...and it's a good one.  Photographer Mark Steinmetz suggests that,

"people like to justify to themselves that the work they are doing is valid and it seems natural to use words to tell yourself that what you are doing is important and meaningful. But it’s important to not to too narrowly define what you’re doing through the use of language. People want to feel like they have a grip on things and so using words to make sense of what you’re doing might provide a feeling of relief and control but be careful you don’t make your project less interesting by having it fit neatly into a scheme of words. Images have a power that is different from the power of words and they communicate in ways that words cannot. In today’s culture, words dominate our thinking and, used in a lazy manner, they help sustain a spectrum of fundamentalist thought. Being able to accept ambiguity leads to a better quality of life and better work."

Click HERE to read the full essay.

Pipilotti Rist at Guangdong Times Museum in China

Mercy Mercy,Audio video installation,Music by：Heinz Rohrer,留涟 [Gentle Wave In Your Eye Fluid], Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2013,All works courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine New York

An excerpt from the announcement on e-flux describes the exhibition as follows:  

"The Guangdong Times Museum is situated on the top floor of a residential tower. Rist has abandoned the lofty, unreachable stance of the art museum, re-envisioning it as a medium for transmitting her spirit to the masses. She has penetrated the substantial space of the art museum, extending her art into the museum garden and into the lives of the museum’s neighbors, creating the outdoor installations Innocent Lanterns. She uses mischievous methods to insert strangeness into the everyday lives of local residents. This “strangeness” is like a mote in your eye, drawing your attention to another side of reality, showing you the danger beneath the glamor.

Rist has also devised the 75-meter-long installation Mercy Mercy especially for Guangdong Times Museum, as well as creating artworks with locally sourced materials, such as Relax Your Eyeball, made with locally collected glass lenses. These artworks are the results of her exploratory visit to Guangzhou last year. Guangdong Times Museum is on the outskirts of Guangzhou, where the city meets the country. It is a microcosm of Chinese urbanization. Through the museum space, Rist has inserted her woven Technicolor world into the complex, contradictory and vibrant Chinese social reality."

Click HERE to visit the museum website.

New Photography 2013 @ MOMA

Lisa Oppenheim, Man holding large camera photographing a cataclysmic event, possibly a volcano erupting, 1908/2012 (Tiled Version 3). 2012

Another interesting selection this year.  One of the first reviews is in The New York Times today, and MOMA has a separate website for the exhibition including short, audio clips with the artists speaking about their work.

Click HERE to read the review.
Click HERE to visit the exhibition website.

Fototazo's How to Start a Project Series

© Brian Ulrich, Marshall Fields, 2009

Another great addition to this series from artist Brian Ulrich.  An excerpt from his contribution is below:

"My advice to students is to work a lot and enjoy working. After a time the project will pick you. Work is also not just using the camera but researching, reading, asking questions, critiquing, etc. Practice. Improvisation. Evaluation. We call it work because it is not easy and doesn’t necessarily get easier. The reward of this is the many small and big discoveries that are outside of what one knows and what one would know by just thinking about it all. I am still amazed by how focus and fidelity can function; I still marvel when I discover something out in the world entirely indicative of the multi-layered moment we live in; at how psyches and expressions change over time."

Click HERE to read the full article.

Live Performance to be viewed on YouTube in Real Time

Nicoline van Harskamp, European English Exercise, 2013. Courtesy the artist.

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room 2013
With Nicoline van Harskamp, Ragnar Kjartansson and Daniel Linehan
19 September, 24 October and 12 December 2013 at 20h BST
Watch live online: www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room is a pioneering programme of live performances commissioned and conceived exclusively for online viewing and simultaneously seen by international audiences across world time zones. 

Audiences are invited to enter the online Performance Room via www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive at 20h in the UK and exactly the same moment across time zones on the specified dates—15h on the East Coast of America, 21h in mainland Europe and 23h in Russia. 

Theatrical Fields

Interesting review of an exhibition of film/video incorporating performance.
"Theatrical Fields examines forms of artistic practice that make use of the theatrical in performance, film and video. Developed as a research project by the curator Ute Meta Bauer, Theatrical Fields explores the analytical and political potential of theatricality through various manifestations ranging from an exhibition to public presentations, film programme to a live performance."  From E-flux

Joan Jonas, Lines in the Sand, 2002. Commissioned by documenta 11. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Werner Maschmann.

The Carnegie International Opens in October

2013 Carnegie International opening weekend

October 4–6, 2013

www.carnegieinternational.org/opening

...among the artists, is Zoe Strauss -

Zoe Strauss, Blast Furnace Matriarchy, Braddock, PA, 2012, from the series Homesteading, a multifaceted collaborative project based in Homestead, PA, and an installation of photographic prints and video projections at Carnegie Museum of Art; Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 2013 Carnegie International

Magdalena Sole at The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Magdalena Solé’s Mississippi Delta is a photographic exploration of the Delta communities in the Deep South, evoking visions of sharecroppers, plantations and the sound of the Blues. The area has a small wealthy gentry and a large impoverished underclass. What is little known outside the Delta is the warmth, resilience, community and family cohesiveness of its people. In 2012, Solé’s in-depth study of the region was published as "New Delta Rising" (The Dreyfus Health Foundation and University Press of Mississippi). (Click HERE for more info)

MAGDALENA SOLÉ
The Mississippi Delta

September 13 – December 15, 2013
Exhibition Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6:00-8:00pm
Artist's Talk, Book Signing and Reception: Friday, September 27, 6:00-8:00pm

4th Street and Issaquena, Clarksdale, MS, 2010

Video Art, Monitors and Boxes...

Came across this today on the blog Who Wore It Better (itself a fantastic archive of works by various artists that are aesthetically and/or conceptually similar, and sometimes reference or appropriate one another).  Had me thinking about our conversation in Intro to Video Art about the purposeful use of specific types of monitors to display moving image works.  Anyhow, here is the image:

Ben Schumacher Obelisk  ::  Ernst Caramelle Video Landcape

New Exhibitions at The Southeast Museum of Photography

Lots of things coming up over in Daytona.  Worth a drive, most certainly.  Click HERE to access the SEMP website.

JANELLE LYNCH
Los Jardines de México

January 25 - April 14, 2013
Exhibition Opening Reception: Friday, January 25, 6:00-8:00pm
Artist's Talk, Book Signing and Reception: March 29, 6:00-8:00pm
Untitled 9, from the series, La Fosa Común

"She does the same as the Mexican animists—the indigenous people who, like their antecedents, saw plants and animals as equals, and even as superior beings worthy of reverence….” —José Antonio Aldrete-Haas, Architect, Landscape Designer, Writer, Mexico City

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Janelle Lynch has garnered international recognition over the last decade for her large-format photographs of the urban and rural landscape. She received an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York and is a 2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY.

Click HERE for more information about Janelle Lynch.
 

From Here On

I was reminded of this by Andy Adams of Flak Photo today.  As he said, good to take a look at every now and again.  Good stuff!
You can click the image to enlarge, and link to an article discussing the exhibition HERE

Touch My Prints - Call for Submissions

Jonathan F. Walz (fabulous CFAM curator) sent some info on this digital publication project my way the other day - it sounds pretty interesting.  The site's originator has some intriguing work on his site as well, dealing with Google Street View (a popular new strategy for looking at and to the world for artists) as well as other projects that incorporate video game imagery and virtual landscapes. 

Click HERE to read the call for submissions.
Click HERE to glance at Aaron Brumbelow's personal work website.

T.M.P. Issue 01

Call for Submissions 

Virtual Connection 

The publication Touch My Prints seeks image based works, essays, virtual sculptures, and video based works on the topics of death, isolation, love, loss, tragedy, betrayal, friendship, etc of and by players and characters with in video games.  

T.M.P is interested in the lives of NPCs (Non-Player Character) and our interactions with them. 

Submission Deadline is April 1, 2013

Mobile Photography as Seen on Source

Really interesting post today on Source that brings together a bunch of really fun and interesting projects.  Click HERE to read the article and view images and video clips.  Good stuff.

Misrepresentation in World Press and Picture of the Year Award Winning Photo

Paolo Pellegrin

Tom Griggs of fototazo recently recommended this article on his Facebook feed.  A very interesting read, especially in light of our recent conversations around ethics and authenticity in Photo I and Photo II.  Click HERE to access the article from BagNews.

Canteen Magazine's Naked Judging Featured on Lenscratch

This will likely be helpful for students to look over in terms of thinking about your work and how it may be perceived by others within the photographic community of lookers and thinkers.  I encourage everyone to have a look at the images and read through the commentary on Lenscratch (from both exhibition jurors and photographers whose work did not advance to the final rounds).  The comments (from both) are very telling.

Click HERE to view the post.

Can A Computer Generate Every Possible Photograph

Re-blogging from ART300 student, Kevin Griffin.  Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Kevin!  Very in keeping with our discussion in class today related to technological advancement and the nature of photography, and our relationship to images. 
Here is Kevin's blog post:
http://kevingriffinphotography.blogspot.com/2013/02/in-relation-to-discussion-today.html
And here is a link to the story on the artist's website:
http://www.jeffreythompson.org/EveryPossiblePhotograph.php

http://www.jeffreythompson.org/EveryPossiblePhotograph.php

Ben Jones: The Video on Rhizome

Interesting write up on Rhizome about the Ben Jones exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. 

Ben Jones, The Video

"The exhibition has been described as a series of video installations and while, technically, that’s correct, it’s also more than that. Collectively, the works in the show function as an installation about making videos.  Unlike many of his fine art contemporaries, Jones is himself a manifestation of network age high-low plurality.  He runs a successful commercial animation practice, creating music videos for the likes of Beck and M.I.A., and he writes, voices, animates, directs and scores the Problem Solverz, a children’s show soon to begin it’s second season. The works on display at MOCA seem keenly aware of his double life and how these differing working methods affect his artistic production."

Click HERE to read the full text and to view images from the show.

Latent Image - Site Redesign

Max Marshall does a fantastic job updating this site with fantastic work on a daily basis.  Take a moment to peruse the site - good stuff.  Click HERE to access.

Barney Kulok (from the Latent Image - 1.25.13)

Vinepeek discussed on Hyperallergic

I'm admittedly perplexed and intrigued.  Could be habit forming, to be sure.  Click HERE to read some thoughts as expressed on Hyperallergic, and/or go directly to Vinepeek.

Photographs in the (Real) World

I came across a couple of interesting posts that related nicely to our conversation in Photo II yesterday - particularly regarding the indexical nature of the photograph as related to authenticity, as well as the nature of being an attendant observer of the world.

Click HERE to read the most recent contribution to Still Searching by Martin Jaeggi, where he interestingly discusses the complicated relationship between the still and moving image, "Despite their more or less identical technical basis, photography in the 20th century was a medium that was considered to have an elevated claim to veracity and authenticity, whereas film was the very epitome of artifice and glorious lies."

And click HERE to read a brief excerpt from The Incoherent Light on the work of British photographer Raymond Moore along with a few clips from a film made about his work.

Raymond Moore, Image from Every so often monograph, 1984

SLOW @ Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville

Very sadly, this exhibition does not open until next weekend (I'll be there today for a lecture I'm giving at the library across the street - go figure).  It looks to be a really nicely curated show though, so I'll be heading back to be sure.  Here are some details from the museum website:

"SLOW: Marking Time in Photography and Film focuses on artists and works that engage photography, film and video to explore questions of time and duration. A combination of still photographs, films, and video works, the exhibition explores multiple approaches to the topic: some works animate and extend the temporal boundaries of painting; others open the sealed confines of photography to the flow of time. In addition, photographic works capture an ever-expanding series of gestures and moments — ones that physically and conceptually transform the boundaries of the medium. In most cases, the temporal elements at play invite the viewer to slow down the process of looking and engage with the works over an expanded period of time in order to observe their unfolding." 

David Claerbout
Ruurlo, Boculorscheweg, 1910, 1997
single channel video projection, black & white, silent, 10 min loop
Courtesy to the artist and Yvon Lambert, Hauser & Wirth, Micheline Szwajcer

Janelle Lynch @ Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona

Janelle Lynch, Untitled 9, from the series, La Fosa Común

Excellent opportunity to see photographic work in person.  Daytona is but a hop, skip and jump from here.  This exhibition (and artist talk, later in the semester) is highly recommended.  Click HERE to visit the museum's website.  An excerpt about the work from the museum's website below -

JANELLE LYNCH
Los Jardines de México

January 25 - April 14, 2013
Exhibition Opening Reception: Friday, January 25, 6:00-8:00pm
Artist's Talk, Book Signing and Reception: March 29, 6:00-8:00pm

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Los Jardines de México presents three related bodies of work, La Fosa Común, Akna and El Jardín de Juegos. Images of overlooked or obscure urban and rural landscapes, they explore aspects of the life cycle—loss, death, regeneration—while simultaneously celebrating life and its intricate beauty.

La Fosa Común is a series of photographs made with an 8x10 camera in Mexico City’s common grave. The site is a burial place for the indigent and unidentified. Also made with an 8x10 camera, Akna is a series of portraits of tree stumps in a nature reserve that explores the theme of rebirth. “Akna,” in Mayan, means “mother” and is the goddess of birth and fertility. Made with a 4x5 camera, El Jardín de Juegos depicts the relics of a children’s recreation area, void of people and eclipsed by nature and neglect.

“Lynch manages to create pictorial order and locate the sites of subtle drama within these Mexican gardens. Her approach has an exquisite lightness of touch, which ensures that the meaning of her photographs is neither too literal nor over-prescribed.” —Charlotte Cotton, Curator and Writer, London

Interview with Kate Durbin

I found this particularly interesting in light of our discussion in Digital Media the other day about New Aesthetics.  Durbin takes this on in really interesting ways and delves into Tumblr culture in particular.  Click HERE to read the interview on Hyperallergic.

Image from Kate Durbin’s “iPrincess”

Some Thoughts on the 2013 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize

As always, this award generates some interesting opinions.  I've grown rather tired of the photographer/artist debate, but aside from beginning on that note, 1000 Words published a thoughtful essay on the nominees.  Click HERE to read the article.

© Cristina De Middel