Category Archives: Community

Community, Research

Stuff & Happiness: Like!!!

Alexandre Singh’s The School for Objects Criticized
New Museum
Thru January 23

Alexandre Singh, _The School for Objects Criticized_, 2010, Multimedia installation, installation view: New Museum of Contemporary Art. Source: New Museum of Contemporary Art

Alexandre Singh, _The School for Objects Criticized_, 2010, Multimedia installation, installation view: New Museum of Contemporary Art. Source: New Museum of Contemporary Art

Caught Free at the New Museum before it closes on January 23rd. By chance, I saved the best for last: Alexandre Singh’s multimedia installation, an installation as theatrical “play,” with inanimate objects as actors. Found objects were lent WASPy perspectives and political positions in surround sound audio tracks and theatrical lighting. It was entertaining, which made the fact of sitting in a room looking at common objects even more strangely compelling.Thankfully, Free is accompanied by an online catalog, with more info on the installation.

Haegue Yang’s Voice and Wind
New Museum
Thru January 23

This installation of colorful, rainbow-palette Venetian blinds and scents occupies the New Museum’s ground floor glass-walled installation space. It’s a fun installation that invites people to walk thru, dipping under portals and encountering semi-enclosed spaces to sniff different scents. I was most interested in the parallels I found with my own work; in the statement, Yang professes an interest in happiness, and colors “on the edge of taste.”

Walls & Bridges: Happiness
New York Public Library
Saturday, January 29, 2011

I’m looking forward to this dialogue about happiness and art, featuring Barbara Cassin, Daniel Handler, Maira Kalman, and Sophie Wahnich.

America considers the pursuit of happiness an inalienable right. But where is this pursuit taking us? How valuable is positive thinking? In arts, melancholia has long been a source of inspiration. Specialist of Ancient Greece Barbara Cassin will give a philosophical point of view on the topic, and historian of the French Revolution Sophie Wahnich will bring some insight on the conditions of happiness. They will be discussing with co-authors of 13 Words Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) and Maira Kalman, also New Yorker cover artist and author of the acclaimed And the Pursuit of Happiness.

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Community

Dangerous or Endangered?

About 10 years ago, I painted murals to support the youth-led juvenile justice movement in Oakland. The issues and activism are examined in a recently released book by anthropologist Jennifer Tilton, Dangerous or Endangered? Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America (NYU Press, 2010).

cover of Dangerous or Endangered? Race and the Politics of Youth in Urban America by Jennifer Tilton, NYU Press, 2010

How do you tell the difference between a “good kid” and a “potential thug”? In Dangerous or Endangered?, Jennifer Tilton considers the ways in which children are increasingly viewed as dangerous and yet, simultaneously, as endangered and in need of protection by the state.

Tilton draws on three years of ethnographic research in Oakland, California, one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities, to examine how debates over the nature and needs of young people have fundamentally reshaped politics, transforming ideas of citizenship and the state in contemporary America. As parents and neighborhood activists have worked to save and discipline young people, they have often inadvertently reinforced privatized models of childhood and urban space, clearing the streets of children, who are encouraged to stay at home or in supervised after-school programs. Youth activists protest these attempts, demanding a right to the city and expanded rights of citizenship.

Dangerous or Endangered? pays careful attention to the intricate connections between fears of other people’s kids and fears for our own kids in order to explore the complex racial, class, and gender divides in contemporary American cities.

The cover features one of my murals (Photography by Scott Braley).

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Community, Research

Points of reference

For artists and/or fans of Borges and Calvino:
Cynthia Ozick reading “In the Reign of Harad IV,” a wonderful short story by Steven Millhauser, about making, visibility, and recognition. On the New Yorker‘s fiction podcast.

For fellow cognitive science and psychology dabblers:
“Social Animal: How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life,” by David Brooks (yup, that David Brooks, the NYT columnist), a summation of loads of psychological and cognitive science research, including thoughts about flow and happiness.

For those who need an optimism booster shot:
Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, by Dasher Keltner (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009).
The UC Berkeley psychology professor’s theories on how to live a balanced life of “completing the good in others.” Interesting discussion of the intellectual lineage from Darwin to Ekman (a facial expression researcher profiled by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker). The author’s long hair + references to Eastern philosophy = high hippie dippy quotient, but Keltner is an informed and lively writer. Those seeking cynical, burdensome academic texts ought look elsewhere.

For those seeking art that touches on psychoanalysis:
Jonathan Solo: Shadow
Catherine Clark Gallery
January 8 – February 19, 2011
see also: Carl Jung, Shadow

For those obsessed with happiness and/or mapping:
Mappiness, an iPhone app that asks users to rate their level of happiness at random moments throughout the day. Developed by London School of Economics PhD candidates, it’s a fully realized, popular version of what I had hoped to do with Hedonimeter.net, a project I started in grad school and hadn’t yet returned to. My enthusiasm for visual and symbolic systems has not evolved into the motivation to learn more about statistics and programming… yet.

For art-seekers in San Francisco:
Works by friends and supporters:
Three solo exhibitions: Jaime Cortez, Kenneth Lo, and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez
Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., San Francisco, CA
January 7, 2011 – February 19, 2011

For art-seekers in LA:
Collective Show
January 21-23 and January 27-30, 2011
995, 997 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, CA

For art-seekers in Liverpool:
Nam June Paik
Tate Liverpool
17 December 2010 – 13 March 2011

For typography nerds:
The flyer for the symposium at the Nam June Paik Art Center. Nothing wrong with type-based solutions, no.

For design-seekers in San Francisco:
A show curated by the super-talented, super-humble Jon Sueda
The Way Beyond Art: Wide White Space
January 20–February 5
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art

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Community

Seasons Greetings

Tidings from some Astorian snowmen:

Snowman Cake at Artopolis Bakery

Snowman Cake at Artopolis Bakery

Pre-blizzard: Inflatable snowman on a balcony.

Inflatable snowman on a balcony.

Jabba the snowman

Post-blizzard: giant Jabba the snowman

I deepened my appreciation for decorations like this when I read that by filling our homes “with objects that reflect and confirm our uniqueness” we “transform a house into a home…. We need a supportive symbolic ecology in the home so that we can feel safe, drop our defenses, and go on with the tasks of life.” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity, 1996)

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Community

Tattfoo Tan: Artist funding Artists

Following Mark Bradford’s exceptional generosity, and continuing the theme of artists funding artists, NYC artist/master composter Tattfoo Tan has initiated a grant program, open to applications from non-New York City artists.

S.O.S. Guilds
Using art as a tool for social change on sustainability and ecology.

APPLY NOW
Open to all artists worldwide [except NYC residents] | Deadline: April 1, 2011

S.O.S. Guilds is an art and sustainable entity that creates social changes by applying the power of artistic imagination to inform, inspire, engage, animate and motivate in various communities around the world, by giving grants to artist to execute art project that high light the sustainable issue. As an artist, we are so used to be funded and in this economic landscape, we should seek to give and fund others artistic project that based on social activism and civic engagement. Artist that are funded by S.O.S. Guilds are encourage to pay it forward by funding others or give back to the S.O.S. Guilds pool of resources.

By offering a small grant of USD500, in two parts payment to guarantee the success and execution of the proposed project. As the founder of S.O.S. Guilds, I’m here to provide supports, marketing, and conceptual thinking to help in planning and trouble shoot in any stages of the project. Project must be completed in a season (3 months) duration and be documented from start to finish on a blog to be shared with the wider online audience. Anyone can apply except resident of New York City due to conflict of interest. Grantees must credit S.O.S. Guilds on all promotional materials.

By gathering like minded artists that are interested in deploying arts as a tools to awakes social consciousness, we as a collective whole around the world can make change one art project at a time.

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Community, Sights

Three reasons to be excited about art

Please excuse my previous griping post and have a look at this:

1. Brendan Fernandes and Ohad Meromi at Art in General

I helped to install these two artists’ shows, and I’m very excited about the quality and experimentation in both of them. I feel very fortunate to work with wonderful staff and interns at Art in General in the production of shows by really kind, thoughtful artists.

Brendan Fernandes’ exhibition, From Hiz Hands, opens in the ground-floor Project Space tomorrow, Friday, December 10 at 6pm. In addition to a massive wall text and audio piece, there are three super neon signs you can see from the street.

Ohad Meromi contribues Rehearsal Sculpture, a likably obscure set of sculptures, props and setting for participatory action. Ohad’s prior work (see Harris Lieberman Gallery, of the sweetly ligature’d logo, for pics) are really fun combinations of formal and vernacular design with social overtones, so I’m really interested in this more explicitly performative and experiential work.

2. Mark Bradford, artist, MacArthur Genius, and artist-philanthropist-role model.

Bradford, who exuded articulateness, integrity and rigor in his talk at SFAI, is a role model. His most recent feat of fearlessness is committing to donate $100k to support other artists in the pursuit of their own projects that might not be otherwise funded. How awesome is that?

3. Via HWT, this image by Frances Twombly, found on ArtNet:

Frances Twombly, Balloons, 2004

Frances Twombly, Balloons, 2004

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Community

chinese art centre’s contemporary art auction

Banner No. 3, 2010, color laser on acetate, gift bag, mat board, frame, 12 x 9 inches / 30 x 23 cm. Installation view at Sight School, Oakland, CA.

I am proud to donate one of my most recent works to support the organization that hosted me for my three-month, life-changing residency in Manchester, UK last year. Online bids will be accepted. Have a look!

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