Curator's Talk: Denise Carvalho
Sunday, July 27th, 2008, 6 - 7 pm
Dumbo Arts Center, 30 Washington Street, Brooklyn

This Sunday at the Dumbo Arts Center curator Denise Carvalho will discuss her ongoing group show Holy Holes: Absolute Stalls. Aimed at investigating the ritualistic and borderline religious structure beneath contemporary consumerism, Holy Holes brings together work from artists Brent Wahl, Dylan Mortimer, Grady Gerbracht, Hadassa Goldvicht, Jenny Marketou, Joseph Bennett, Adriana Varella, Angela Freiberger, Gearóid Dolan, Tobaron Waxman, Kimberly Simpson, Karin Giusti, Marcia X, Meirav Leshem, Kwabena Slaughter, and Neil Beloufa. It is an open question whether a given absolute, religious or otherwise, takes spectacular place at all; whether consumer society represents a replacement for religious habits or their evolution. Certainly there are aspects of devotion and worship in the quotidian reception of both capital and the divine, but how then to explain the historical opposition between organized religion and the more decadent offerings of the culture industry? Some would argue its a spurious opposition to begin with, merely one niche market marketing itself in opposition to another, but if thats the case, how to locate any authentic opposition to anything anywhere? Insofar as opposition appears it had a mailing list. Free.

CRG Open Video Series - STORYTELLING
Thusday, July 24, 7pm - Limited Seating - Arrive Early
CRG Gallery - 535 West 22nd Street

This Thursday at CRG Milena Hoegsberg and Kelly Shindler curate STORYTELLING, a set of film and video that "collapse(s) and expand(s) the boundaries of fact and fiction from different vantage points." Artists include: Charles Atlas & Marina Abramović, Nanna Debois Buhl, Martha Colburn, Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Peter Larsson, and Aada Niilola. An exploration of history on either side of the individual/collective divide, STORYTELLING seeks a mutual indictment of fantasy and documentary, the personal and the political. Ideally, the resulting ambiguity produces an excess of meaning, allowing for otherwise singular moments to lend themselves to multiple interpretations, while still remaining under the generalized aegis of storytelling. Free, but with limited seating, it is recommended that you arrive early.

Playscape - installation by Dana Strasser and Isabella Bruno
7-10pm, July 18th, 2008
Over the Opening - North 6th between Kent and Wythe, Brooklyn

L I V E sound & image
Friday, July 18 - East Coast Aliens Salon
216 Franklin Street GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN - $10

Over the Opening, MTAA's second-Friday-of-the-month-time-based-installation-party is tonight. Converting their North 6th studio into a presentation space, the collective plays host to Playscape an installation by Dana Strasser and Isabella Bruno. Promising "a playspace for the adult set using specifically selected, everyday objects in transformative ways," as well as balloons, Playscape will be the last OTO until fall.

After that you can head north to Greenpoint for a trio of duos at L I V E sound & image - DRAW, LoVid and Cinemage all take experimental approaches to historical practices of melding images with sound. Thrown in is a screening of Fred Worden's Everyday Bad Dream and a live set by Amsterdam based turntablist dj sniff and saxophonist Keir Neuringer. At the East Coast Aliens Salon. Ten Dollars.

Screening - Short Films recommended by The Center for Land Use Interpretation
July 17, 2008, 8:30pm
Sarah Meltzer Gallery - 525-531 West 26th

This Thursday, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, "a research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues," has recommended a series of short films to be screened at Sara Meltzer as part of their ongoing Landscapes for Frankenstein exhibition. The films "observe the effects of man and technology on the natural landscape." One might think that one would be hard pressed to find a film, that, simply by virtue of its sheer existence, does not, in some way represent said effects - but it remains a refreshingly open-ended invitation. Even more intriguing, in some ways, is the 'interpretation,' at work in the center's title. At first glance it seems to be asserting some textual quality of land, that land is that which is interpreted via its many uses. But that would make the 'use' redundant, so instead it seems devoted to understanding the reception of land-use, how already or soon-to-be existing structures in that realm are themselves interpreted, or, further is itself engaged in such a large scale interpretation of said structures. Should be interesting, in any case.

What My Dad Gave Me - Chris Burden
June 11 – July 19, 2008
Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue between 49th and 50th

“The essential character of the toy,” Agamben writes “is something quite singular, which can be grasped only in the temporal dimension of a ‘once upon a time’ and a ‘no more,’ the toy is that which belonged – once, no longer - to the realm of the sacred or of the practical-economic… What the toy preserves of its sacred or economic model, what survives of this after its dismemberment or miniaturization, is nothing other than the human temporality that was contained therein… [the toy] makes present and renders tangible human temporality in itself…” It seems to be precisely this tangibility that Chris Burden pursues with his What My Dad Gave Me, a six-story building constructed entirely from toy-parts in the erector-set mold on display at Rockefeller center through Saturday. Indeed, by utilizing his toys on a scale equal to the actual buildings that inspired them, Burden has found a way of emphasizing Agamben’s distinction even more vividly – making the difference between the toy and its inspiration not simply obvious, but singular, what with the loss of a discrepancy in size. And for anyone who has sought to professionally pursue something they loved as a child, the effect is startlingly poignant. After all - what is left for our childhood desires amidst the praxis they (presumably) spawned? It is a question begged beautifully by Burden as he makes a six-story cacophony of time’s quiet passing. Presented by the Public Art Fund.

Artist Talk: Jean Shin
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7:00 pm
26 Greene Street - Free

This Wednesday, artist Jean Shin will discuss her work with Nathalie Angles, director of Location One's International residency program. Shin's continuing project involves the repurposing of refuse, including, "broken umbrellas, donated clothing, losing lottery tickets, emptied wine bottles and old computer keycaps." By bringing all these objects together into a whole, Shin stages the vibration between individual and community, highlighting certain connections and masking others. At times she has targeted specific communities or groups for materials, aiming at properly postmodern portraiture. Her current exhibition And we move investigates the interdependence of music and representation, choosing to emphasize the movement of a conductor's jacket as he orchestrates music by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, and Ibert's Flute Concerto.

Practice of Encroachment: From the global border to the border neighborhood
Opening Reception: July 10, 2008, 6-8 pm
PARC Foundation Gallery, 29 Bleecker Street, New York.

Its moving season in New York, and anybody writhing through that ridiculous process will be interested in the opening at PARC foundation tomorrow night. An exhibition organized "as a public platform to discuss the crisis of affordable housing, and the de-funding of public infrastructure in the contemporary city," Teddy Cruz' Practice of Encroachment investigates new ideas for social density and communal living. Based on the Sand Diego/Tijuana border, Estudio Teddy Cruz exists to experiment with urban organization. Works in this show "include conceptual works, presented through videos, photographs, drawings, models and cartographies... and “McMansion Retrofitted,” which proposes to alter an existing 8000 square foot single-family suburban house into a mixed-use multi-family dwelling." The opening reception is from 6-8 pm and the show runs until October 25.

Artist as Publisher
July 9, 2008, 6-9 pm - The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor

"Who writes? For whom is the writing being done? In what circumstances?," Edward Said said, asking after the intellectual conditions of production proper to a humanist criticism. (A modifier about which he confessed to have "contradictory feelings of affection and revulsion.") Though Said was invested in a slightly different field his observations apply equally to a a bumper crop of art writing. With regards a given professional constituency: "Once again we are back to the quandary suggested by the three thousand advanced critics reading each other to everyone else's unconcern... what is the acceptable humanistic antidote to what one discovers, say amongst sociologists, philosophers and so-called policy scientists who speak only to and for each other in a language oblivious to everything but a well-guarded, constantly shrinking fiefdom forbidden to the uninitiated?" Well one such prescription might be opening at The Center for Book Arts this Wednesday; Artist as Publisher includes a great number of artists who have "embraced independent publication as a means to bypass the gallery system, to produce new artwork affordably, and to distribute their artwork widely and on their own terms." Of course it remains to be seen which direction Omar Lopez-Chahoud's curation will emphasize - and though its hard to imagine a discourse more oblique than the one currently on offer; that's precisely the appeal of this show, insofar as we don't know what art writing might look like when pulled out from behind the lens of an overheated industry.

My Barbarian: Post-Paradise, Sorry Again
Thursday and Friday, July 3 and 4, 2008 - 7:30 pm
New Museum , $8 Members, $10 everybody else

The Living Theatre is one of those strange, anachronistic beasts that has steadfastly refused its consignment to the pages of history - its actually still around and kicking. It's a quirk proper to the medium that the theater everyone talks about after the fact is so very rarely vital in its own right, Beckett being perhaps the greatest exception. This was never more apparent than in the work of the Living's patron saint, Antonin Artaud, who, though a luminously brilliant thinker and writer, was a pretty disastrous theater-maker. Indeed, were it not for the Living's considerable achievements in the sixties, one could easily argue that Artaud's greatest legacy is the work of Jacques Derrida. In any case, whatever remains of the Living Theater is certainly most relevant as history; something they tacitly acknowledged by bringing back The Brig the other day. Yet their dogged, commendable persistence produces situations like the one this Thursday and Friday at the New Museum, where a young performance tribe with a cool name tucks in to its still twitching corpse. My Barbarian's piece Post-Paradise, Sorry Again, is at least partially a riff on the Living's most widely known work, Paradise Now which included, get this, nudity and the examination of social taboos. I suspect My Barbarian's work is a bit more complicated, times being what they are, but you'll have to hit the Bowery to be sure.

Half of the People Are Stoned and the Other Half Are Waiting for the Next Election
Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 8pm
Presented by Light Industry at Industry City 55 33rd Street 3rd Floor, Brooklyn

Of all the ways the Left likes to get stoned, and they are legion, nothing confounds like a hit of historical determinism. The faith that the extended and nauseating pitch and yaw of politics will somehow resolve itself into blissful harmony has been on and off the menu for almost two hundred years. The Right, meanwhile, has turned is own version of a frightening similar eschaton into a bestselling book series, among other plastics. Hell, The German Ideology may be better written, but it certainly doesn’t sell as well. So was the 2004 election inevitable? Was the triumph of a particularly ham-fisted ideology necessary for further exposing the bankruptcies of ye old System? It is an easy pipe to smoke. Tuesday Nick Hallet curates a spate of video, performance docs, and novel media celebrating those amongst us less inclined towards doing dialectical drugs while playing electoral hooky. Artists include Jen Liu, Taylor Mac, Laura Parnes, Seth Price, Aaron Valdez, Carbon Defense League, Saul Levine, Aldo Tambellini, The Yes Men, Pink Bloque, Institute for Applied Autonomy, James Tigger! Ferguson, and Wynne Greenwood, amongst others. 80 minutes for six bucks. Tickets at the door.