MUSING IN AUSTRALIA

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Giant Step Towards Institutional Change

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Giant Step is a project organized for the purpose of discovering the place of the institution within contemporary culture, with institutional change being the ultimate goal. To provide a range of perspectives, Giant Step involves two internationally established institutions, Van Abbemuseum (represented by Charles Esche) and MOSTYN | Wales (represented by Alfredo Cramerotti), and two that are less connected to a rigid institutional structure, vessel (represented by Viviana Checchia and Anna Santomauro in cooperation with Vlad Morariu) and Galeria Labirynt (represented by Magdalena Linkowska in cooperation with Anna Smolak and Magdalena Ujma). Giant Step begins by researching the specific issues and urgencies that occur in each of the local and national contexts where these institutions function (Italy, Netherlands, Poland, UK). In the second phase of the project, there will be an analysis of the various applications of cultural production in Europe in order to foster dynamic dialogue and discussion. The main goal of this project is to establish possible roles that institutions could play in the cultural production of a specific area, in order to respond to the needs of the area itself. In this process, Giant Step aims to develop the concept of an "ideal" institution, which entails the necessities of supporting and developing culture and creating critical dialogue ... This will be a multidisciplinary process carried out through the format of a "nomad symposium," which allows the application of efforts to a variety of local artistic communities and audiences. Due to high influence from the heritage of historical institutional critique, Giant Step will focus on relaying this material; local cultural operators will be provided with books, interviews, workshops, and talks, which will be the basis for the discussions. Multiple issues will be addressed, such as the adaptation of "traditional" cultural institutions to complicated economic, social, and cultural contexts, the ideal form of the institution and its production, and the adaptation of current formats to keep up with cultural and societal change. The Giant Step project has begun on January 9, 2012, with all partners starting their research activity with their local artistic and cultural communities in order to focus on aspects that will be discussed during the symposia. Each respective partner will have a separate timeframe for the Giant Step symposia. June 12th signals the start of activity production, with the first of the four symposia. Promoted by vessel, it will also found the basis for another important appointment of the Italian institution: vessel's International Curatorial Workshop, an intensive three days workshop for young curators from all over the world, which in this second edition, June 15–17, will deal with the theme of institutional critique. To participate in vessel's International Curatorial Course, submit to the open call by 24th of March 2012. At www.giant-step.org, it is possible to get further information about the project, the institutions involved and all the other activities connected to Giant Step.

GO2 ... http://www.eurocult.org/

AUDATIOUS MARKETING

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"Things just got weirder, thanks to our ass-kicking resident Yanks Kirsha Kaechele and Daphane Park. You already know that Kirsha is running the Mona Market on the roof of the museum – every Saturday until April 14 ••• There's fresh, local produce to take home with you and yummy food to eat on site, as well as live music and weekly workshops. Store your produce in our fridge for free, while you shop and laze. And store your kids with us as well, at the MoMa Minors workshops  ••• What you don't know is that Kirsha and Daphane, an artist from New York, were tragic victims of ‘tent fraud'. This basically involved handing over a significant amount of money to a non-existent tent-fabricating company. So the tent was delayed. Gaddamit! Anyhow, it's here now: a ‘Minnie Mouse Gangster Feathered Serpent' inspired, says Daphane, by ‘the imminent return of Quetzalcoatl and the resultant end of the world'. Remember: they're Yanks."

DEADpiano Muses

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dead piano abandoned piano buggered piano wreaked piano stuffed piano

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ecoCULTURE and 'The Forest'

Eileen MacDonagh with her Ogham Stones 2012,
VISUAL Carlow: photo Cathy Fitzgerald

ecoartnotebook is where Cathy Fitzgerald writes about eco-art works that inspire her and that hopefully will inspire others. 

This site also documents a SLOW ART project. It's an ongoing diary in images, short films; detailing the transformation of a small monoculture conifer plantation in IRELAND into an ecologically & economically, permanent real FOREST. 

In Cathy Fitzgerald's art practice she's interested in how we represent NATURE on FILM - is it possible to create films that convey a more ECOCENTRIC, empathic world view, re-examining how we connect and experience what's around us near at hand and further away. 

Let's imagine this as DIGITALmusing! Let Museums and art galleries engage more in DIGITALmusing.

Click here to go Cathy's  ECOCINEMA 

LACE?

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MONA's food for thought

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MORE than the "first lady of MONA", David Walsh's partner Kirsha Kaechele aims to bridge cultural divides. This weekend, Kaechele's MoMa market project, which features local food curators Jo Cook and Michelle Crawford, market co-ordinator Shae Thomas and design stalls curator Natalie Holtsbaum, adds a new element, with visiting New York artist Daphane Park's "Minnie Mouse Quezacotl rainbow serpent"

Valentine’s Day 2012 – A special event for donors to the University of Queensland Art Collection & Art Museum

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The occasion also marked the launch of the University of Queensland Art Collection Online - go here or jump to my 'collection residual gift' page, Dr Campbell Grey's team with the online main man, Christian Moody are in the process of making this happen across the 3000+art works in the collection. The individual seating at last night's dinner had these foiled chocolates, I always like the other side, a reverse twist, the hidden or shadow part of the equation. A boxed set of cards and envelopes with an •image by Dr William Yang (Willy Young to those of us locals with a memory) was also given to guests. - *somebody loves me 2009.

100 Silences X 100 Listenings

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2012 is John Cage's (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) centenary year. Recognised as one of the most important composers of the 20th Century, John Cage’s true legacy extends far beyond the world of contemporary classical music. Cage alerted us to a world where we might no longer look at a painting, a book, or a person without wondering how they might sound if you listened closely.

the auxiliaryMUSEUM Celebratory Score:

• Perform a silence for 4' 33" 100 times
• Listen in silence for 4' 33" 100 times

Please post a proposal for a silence and a listening in the comments section below

HOW TO LEAD: even when you follow

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Hobart's MONA may not always be THE FIRST but you can count on David Walsh being audacious and up there leading the pack.

A Different Record

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A record player that plays slices of wood. Year ring data is translated into music, 2011 ... Modified turntable, computer, vvvv, camera, acrylic glass, veneer, approx. 90x50x50 cm ... A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently. Thanks to Land Salzburg, Schmiede, Pro-ject Audio, Karla Spiluttini, Ivo Francx, vvvv, Rohol ...  Bartholomäus Traubeck, born in Munich, Germany in 1987. Currently living and studying in Rotterdam, Netherlands and Linz, Austria.

CURATORIALtheses Galore

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 do it: the exhibition between actualization and virtualization, repetition and difference. do it began in 1993 with a discussion among Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier, and Hans Ulrich Obrist in the Cafe Select, Paris. So, far from being 'new' is quite 'old' but in quite a few ways the do it concept is still very close to the cutting edge by comparison with many current exhibition manifestations in museums. These initiating cultural speculators had been interested in various forms of instructional procedures since the early 1970s, and that evening they spoke of the instructions contained within their own work. Since the 1970s Lavier has made many works that contain written instructions in order to observe the effects of translation on an artwork as it moves in and out of various permutations of language. Boltanski, like Lavier, is also interested in the notion of interpretation as an artistic principle... Click here to read more

CLICK HERE FOR A 1996 BRISBANE EXAMPLE

SHIFTING PARADIGMS @MMoA

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"This month, the Museum launched its first iPad app interactive e-publication for the exhibition Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art. The Met Buncheong app complements the exhibition catalogue and includes highlights from each chapter in the book, a video introduction from Soyoung Lee, co-curator of the exhibition and co-author of the catalogue, 360-degree object views, multiple image views, panoramas of the gallery, and links to publications and related sections of the Museum's website. The interactive e-publication serves as a wonderful introduction to the exhibition and an enticing preview of the exhibition catalogue.

The Met Buncheong iPad app is available for free in the iTunes store"

Fieldwork in the Museum

The Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt is the first ethnographic institution in the German-speaking world to develop a new research lab on the borderline between advanced art practice and anthropology. In the Weltkulturen priceless objects, films, and photography from the Frankfurt collection are newly interpreted and prepare the ground for future exhibitions.

OBJECT ATLAS – Fieldwork in the Museum 25 January–16 September 2012  Weltkulturen Museum Schaumainkai 29 Frankfurt am Main, Germany www.weltkulturenmuseum.de

"In all cultures there has been a constant exchange of materials, goods, ideas and people that consciously or unconsciously shapes, turns and shifts our perception. There's always something somewhere from another culture. In this exhibition, artists make the objects move from one thought to another, from one space to another, creating a layering. They situate these objects once again, producing a new mapping for the 21st century. The word "Atlas" gives a geographic body to all these artefacts without reducing them to a single world map." (Otobong Nkanga) ... Click here to read more

THE INTERNET: What's at Risk?

The US Congress is about to pass an internet censorship bill written by the copyright and corporate music and film lobbies, claiming that this bill is written in your name to "protect creativity." The law would allow the government or corporations to censor entire sites—they just have to convince a judge that the site is "dedicated to copyright infringement." In fact, PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are backed and largely written by the Hollywood film industry, namely the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is trying to sell goods and ideas that are already free. 

Similar to its most well-known President, Jack Valenti, who represented Hollywood interests in Washington, and vice-versa, the current chairman and CEO of the MPAA is Chris Dodd, a prominent member of the Democratic Party and US Senator from Connecticut for 30 years ... Click here for the full text

Just Imagine

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An Ephemeral Museum

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Prada is pleased to present "24 h Museum", an ephemeral museum conceived by Francesco Vezzoli in collaboration with AMO, the kaleidoscopic off-shoot of the OMA/Rem Koolhaas architecture studio. "24 h Museum" will open on January 24, 2012—for 24 hours only—at the historical Palais d'Iéna in Paris, designed by Auguste Perret between 1936 and 1946, currently the house of the French Conseil Économique, Social et Environnemental.

Free admittance

Wednesday 25 January 2012

7–11am open to the public

2–5pm open to the public

Reimagining Museums

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The Happy Museum: A tale of how it could turn out all right Sam Thompson and Jody Aked, with Bridget McKenzie, Chris Wood, Maurice Davies and Tony Butler The aim of this short paper is to begin a conversation about how the UK museum sector can respond to the challenges presented by the need for creating a more sustainable future. Our proposition is that museums are well placed to play an active part, but that grasping the opportunity will require reimagining some key aspects of their role, both in terms of the kinds of experience they provide to their visitors and the way they relate to their collections, to their communities and to the pressing issues of the day. A PDF copy of the paper is available for download by clicking this link - The Happy Museum paper

e-flux #31 Online NOW!

As we continue to reflect upon the chain of political upheavals of 2011, it may be interesting to consider a particular shift in the status of information technology, now that it has been deployed as such a powerful force in facilitating the rise of a new popular voice.

 Keller Easterling

An Internet of Things

A non-modern question—the artifacts of which have always been with us, the boundaries of which include but exceed all of the above experiments, and the answer to which we already know—is how space, without digital or media enhancement, is itself information.

Gean Moreno

Notes on the Inorganic, Part I: Accelerations

By constantly invading and liquidating resource-rich contexts, capitalism encourages images that project what will inevitably be left in its wake: a dead world. And just as one can imagine (or see) patches of devastated and desolate land, a kind of localized post-extraction desertification, one can just as easily imagine this becoming a planetary condition: the globe as a rotating, dead lithosphere, coated in a fine dust of decomposing once-organic particles.

Gregory Sholette

After OWS: Social Practice Art, Abstraction, and the Limits of the Social

Once again, to go beyond shallow assumptions of social media's invasion of traditional art practices, let me put the question differently: Where does abstraction and the non-representational intersect with the social? Or, put the other way around: What is the limit of the social within the social itself?

Sven Lütticken

General Performance

The term “performance” is slippery even within relatively well-defined contexts. In today’s economy, it not only refers to the productivity of one’s labor but also to one’s actual, quasi-theatrical self-presentation, one’s self-performance in an economy where work has become more dependent on immaterial factors.

Grant Kester

The Sound of Breaking Glass, Part II: Agonism and the Taming of Dissent

This shift from art to culture is often figured as a loss or abandonment, as art surrenders its privileged immanence to the brutal instrumentality of vanguard politics. “Unlike the political vanguard,” Romero Brest writes in 1967, the artistic avant-garde “does not have an aim to achieve.”

WHAT'S NEW IS/WAS OLD: SSSSTEAMpunk

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SSSSTEAMpunk  Artwork's Amanda Smith asks "Have you ever come across very elegant people dressed in wild neo-Victorian gear -- complete with top hats and brass goggles, bustles and leather bustiers?" If you reckon so, then they're/you're probably a member of the  STEAMpunk community – knowingly or maybe not. Are you into DIY or Thomas Pynchon or Jules Verne or HG Wells? If so well you are probably at least a  STEAMpunk empathizer. 

It seems that STEAMpunk is a subgenre of science fiction with a kind of 'Victorian tinge' involving industrial investigations such as steam powered engines with a growing number of adherents maybe.

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For a random STEAMpunk 'surf' click on these links [1] • [2] • [3] • [4] 

CLICK HERE for some undiagnosed Filipino STEAMpunk

THE NEW 'PRINT': A New Paradigm

Send to Print / Print to Send offers an impression of uses of 3D Printing* in the design industry today. This timely exhibition shows work by designers and organisations who are developing the capabilities of this technology. In addition it will include examples of the increasingly important role 3D Printing plays in the design process, particularly during the complex prototyping stages ... CLICK HERE TO READ MORE




NOTE: Download the PDF for the full set of visuals

PROGRAMMING & TICKING ALL THE BOXES

The 9th Gwangju Biennale - 'ROUNDTABLE' September 7–November 11, 2012     www.gb.or.kr 

The Gwangju Biennale Foundation is pleased to announce 'ROUNDTABLE' as the theme of the 9th Gwangju Biennale. The team of six co-artistic directors appointed to organize the upcoming biennale have chosen 'ROUNDTABLE' as a theme to explore the possibility of democratic and non-hierarchical exchange concerning global cultural production, through various forms of collective endeavour, research into historic entanglements among societies, and the exploration of diverse contexts of belonging ... CLICK HERE TO  READ MORE

Photography in a Museum

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CULTURAL PRODUCTION & SOCIAL ACTION

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THE MUSING IDEA: A Paradigm Shift

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 Nina Simon is currently working with the McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, California as the Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History. Nina is also the author of The Participatory Museum  and she has presented many papers and written many an essay on museums – one being Going Analog: Translating Virtual Learnings into Real Institutional Change – http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2009/papers/simon/simon.html 
The Abstract: "Museum technology professionals have spent the last several years advocating for, experimenting with, and expanding the Web presence of museums. We’ve created museum spaces on-line that offer free access to visitors all over the world and increasingly invite visitors to talk with each other, take content away with them, access and remix parts of the collection that aren’t on public display – in short, to do things that aren’t possible in the real museum.

But now we should be going in the other direction and applying the methods and lessons of the Web and Web 2.0 to the museum itself. How can museums be more like the Web? How can they be open 24/7? How can visitors customize their experiences? How can museums become places to talk with other visitors and sneak into the most interesting drawers and move things around?


This paper advocates for museum Web technology professionals to take a broader view of their roles within their institutions and focus energy on translating their knowledge to the onsite experience. It presents models and case studies for how to do this kind of translation from virtual-to-real space, both strategically (so that curators, directors, and boards can sign on to the vision) and practically."

"Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish - a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." (Lakoff and Johnson 1980)

Click here for Nina Simon's CV

The National Vending Machine – Building a community of objects

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The National Vending Machine (Nationale Automatiek in Dutch) is place where visitors to a museum can buy historical objects. The objects are both historical and recognisable, like a light bulb or tulips. Each object tells a story about Dutch history, which visitors can read on an attached label, see as a video or discover on the project’s website.

The idea is to build a community of objects. Visitors can contribute to the exposition by telling their story about the object they bought or by suggesting new objects ... Click here to read more

A BOOK: The Participatory Museum

Why Participate?

"At the end of 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts [USA] released a sobering report on the state of arts attendance in the United States. The authors didn’t mince words; in the preface, they wrote, “The 2008 survey results are, at a glance, disappointing.”Over the last twenty years, audiences for museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population. Cultural institutions argue that their programs provide unique cultural and civic value, but increasingly people have turned to other sources for entertainment, learning, and dialogue. They share their artwork, music, and stories with each other on the Web. They participate in politics and volunteer in record numbers. They even read more. But they don’t attend museum exhibits and performances like they used to.

How can cultural institutions reconnect with the public and demonstrate their value and relevance in contemporary life? I believe they can do this by inviting people to actively engage as cultural participants, not passive consumers. As more people enjoy and become accustomed to participatory learning and entertainment experiences, they want to do more than just “attend” cultural events and institutions. The social Web has ushered in a dizzying set of tools and design patterns that make participation more accessible than ever. Visitors expect access to a broad spectrum of information sources and cultural perspectives. They expect the ability to respond and be taken seriously. They expect the ability to discuss, share, and remix what they consume. When people can actively participate with cultural institutions, those places become central to cultural and community life.

This book presents techniques for cultural institutions to invite visitor participation while promoting institutional goals. Community engagement is especially relevant in a world of increasing participatory opportunities on the social Web, but it is not new. Arguments for audience participation in cultural institutions trace back at least a hundred years. There are three fundamental theories underpinning this book:

• The idea of the audience-centered institution that is as relevant, useful, and accessible as a shopping mall or train station (with thanks to John Cotton Dana, Elaine Heumann Gurian, and Stephen Weil).
• The idea that visitors construct their own meaning from cultural experiences (with thanks to George Hein, John Falk, and Lynn Dierking).
• The idea that users’ voices can inform and invigorate both project design and public-facing programs (with thanks to Kathy McLean, Wendy Pollock, and the design firm IDEO) ... Click here to read on

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

RESEARCH & PERFORMANCE: Independent Curators International

Marina Abramovic, The House with the Ocean View (2002)
Sean Kelly Gallery

FOREWORD: Increasingly Independent curatorship is where we are finding the sharp end curatorial practice. 'Institutional Curatorship' all to often is marked by ultra-conservatisim and outmoded status quo practices.  However cultural producers are embracing dynamic new approaches to their work and likewise, audiences are much better informed, and much more demanding,  than it has traditionally been assumed that they are. 

The game has been lifted by independent curators and researchers. They are blurring borders and challenging the once reliable 'safe practices' dished up by institutions. This research focusing upon performance art is an exemplar of where we might find the critical thinking.

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Performance and Reperformance
By Mariana Azevedo, Sakina Namazi, Shannon Ryan, Keeli Shaw on November 1, 2011 Posted in Dispatch
As an artistic classification, the term ‘performance art’ is fairly contentious within the contemporary art world. Over the past 40 years, the artistic practice has evolved to encompass myriad forms and titles in an attempt to adequately categorize the genre. Artists, curators and scholars readily agree there are historical sub-movements within the genre, such as body art, live art, etc., but the term ‘performance art’ has been largely accepted as the definitive term and subsequently integrated within both art historical and popular discourse. Some argue the classification of ‘performative’ is misleading and antithetical to the conceptual basis of most works done in the 1960’s and 70’s. The term portends theatricality and therefore misconstrues or alters the intentions of the work because of the association with entertainment.

So it is easy to imagine the contention and debate brought to the forefront of the art world when performance artworks made in the 1960’s and 70’s - when performance art really took off as an artistic practice - was featured within the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in 2005 and 2010, respectively. The Guggenheim’s “Seven Easy Pieces” (2005) featured works by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Gina Pane and Vito Acconci. Intriguingly, these seminal works did not feature the original artist but rather were performed by another, an artistic contemporary who has proclaimed her intentions to take control of the genre: Marina Abramovic. She is responsible for coining the phrase ‘reperformance’ and much debate has occurred over the validity of the term, especially considering the debate regarding the antecedent term ‘performance.’ ... Click here to read more

Christmas Greeting From Auckland

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CLICK HERE FOR THE MUSEUM'S 5 STAR BLOG

An Exemplar For Online Curation

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"As part of the MCA’s redevelopment, [its] online pilot project showcases 28 works from the recent MCA Collection: New Acquisitions in Context. This online resource, over time, will become a key component in showcasing the MCA’s expanding collection of contemporary Australian art ... The first selection represents a cross section of current art practices. Making these works accessible online is an important step: it reflects the Museum’s ongoing commitment to providing high quality educative and accessible resources and the institution’s determination to disseminate the wealth of ideas encapsulated by artists in their work – ideas that not only draw attention to but confront many of the social, technological and political challenges we face today ... Click here to read more"

http://mca.com.au/

Curation and keeping up in the 21st Century

Manifesta Journal is pleased to announce the launch of its third series. The format of Manifesta Journal(MJ), like the Manifesta biennial, is a changing model. It aims to facilitate a platform for a critical analyses into international curating and biennials in general. Every six editions, a new editorial team from diverse areas of Europe and beyond is invited to develop a different concept for the series, reflecting on contemporary Europe and the world.

For the first time in MJ's history, MJ #13–18 will be available for free online. Readers will also soon be able to order a print-on-demand issue. 

About: Founded in 2003, Manifesta Journal is an international journal that focuses on the practices and theories of contemporary curating. Manifesta Journal is an independent project, initiated by the Manifesta Foundation. The format of Manifesta Journal (MJ), like the Manifesta biennial, is a changing model. It aims to be both self-reflective and critical toward international curating and biennials in general, but also toward its own functional mechanisms. Every six editions, a new editorial team from diverse areas of Europe and beyond is invited to develop a different concept for the series, to reflect on contemporaery Europe and the world ... After the comprehensive grammar and manual for contemporary curatorship established in the first six issues of Manifesta Journal, MJ #1–6, by Viktor Misiano and Igor Zabel and which continued in the series of six issues that were realized between 2009–2011 by Viktor Misiano, Senior Editor Nathalie Zonnenberg and Associate Editor Filipa Ramos, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez as Chief Editor and Virginie Bobin as Associate Editor have taken over the editorial work of the Manifesta Journal for the upcoming six issues, MJ #13–18. Manifesta Journal can be regarded as a porous platform to reconsider ... read more here

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The canon of curating: At the heart of MJ’s 11th issue, “The Canon of Curating,” lies the question on how the canon of curating is to be defined. If “a history of exhibitions” must be written what should its parameters be? In art history, the canon has been losing ground since the 1960s, when the  study of “great artists” began to be replaced slowly by the study of the conditions surrounding artistic practice. This shift was also demonstrated by curators of the time. Nevertheless, within the practice of curating, the canon seems to occupy a noteworthy position—if only because some curators still feel the need to “curate outside the canon.” In the Historiography section, Bruce Altshuler explores the discussion and research around the complex establishment of an exhibition canon. Simon Sheikh notes in his contribution that it is important to keep the inclusionary and exclusionary mechanisms of a canon in mind and reconsider the .... read more here

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Ethics “The true art of a curator is an art of compromise.” No doubt Pierre Restany's bon mot reflects the reality of curatorial practice. Curators are dealing with different and often alien interests—political, economic and social. In realizing their oeuvre, they must always satisfy the requests of politicians, sponsors, managers, artists, professionals and large audiences. What are the limitations of this art of compromise? Does an art of compromise also presume a consciousness of what should not be a matter of compromise? These are among the many questions that lay at the ground of Manifesta Journal 12 on curatorial ethics; these questions ultimately also try to examine whether ethics is a secondary consideration for curatorial work, or inextricable from the process and ..... read more here