Sophie Calle © Adagp, Paris 2010, Courtesy Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris & Miami

A small explosive event happened yesterday, as French conceptual artist Sophie Calle rolled into California College of Arts to give a talk about using photography as a medium in her work.  “In her conceptual projects, Calle immerses herself in examinations of voyeurism, intimacy, and identity. In the process of secretly investigating, reconstructing or documenting strangers’ lives, Calle manipulates situations and individuals and often adopts guises. Thus in the act of pursuing a stranger to Venice, or taking the position of a hotel chamber maid to surreptitiously observe the guests, Calle conditions and recasts her own identity for that period of time. The documents or so-called evidence that results from these conceptual projects are presented as photographs, photo-text installations, and bookworks.

Calle’s works often focus on the nature of desire and on the relationships between the artist/observer and the objects of her investigations, as in her sole video project Double-Blind. Produced in collaboration with Gregory Shepard, this conceptual road movie was released theatrically in Europe as a feature film, entitled No Sex Last Night.”

Unfortunately, I’m on the east coast and couldn’t attend, but there are plenty of shouts published on Tumblr.

As we approach the horizon of the 2011 Unsound Music Festival NY, I can feel the anticipation building up. If you are a fan of electronic music and sonic arts, like I am, you probably know that Europe (particularly Germany) is the place to be. Beginning April 1st, New York folks will be in for a treat.  It was only until a few weeks ago that the 2011 program has been announced, but it was well worth the wait.  Last year’s line-up was amazing, but this year’s will not disappoint. The Festival officially opens on April 6th, with a preliminary week of screenings and lectures opening on April 1st under Unsound Festival NY Labs.

View full program and artists here.

Friends at Graphite Gallery in Williamsburg have organized a silent film and auction event with works donated from more than 28 artists!  All proceeds from this event will be donated to a non-profit organization, JHelp, which is dedicated to helping earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. Currently they are working to bring food, clothing, blankets, water, etc. to the people in the Tohoku region where the tsunami hit hardest.

Artists include: Phoenix, Matthew Waldman, Ryan McGinness, Kenzo Minami, José Parla, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Lady Aiko, Kenji Hirata, Rostarr, Sebastien Agneessens, Motomichi Nakamura, Tomoko Sugimoto, Katja Holtz, Junko Shimizu, Patrick Bradley, Austin Power, Hiroki Otsuka, Shigeko Okada, Keiko Tokushima, Yoko Furusho, Lisa Alisa, Max Steiner, Terrance Hughes, Hazuki Aikawa, Begonia Colomar, Masa Kawamura, Akane Kodani and more.

Graphite NY Gallery
38 Marcy Ave, Brooklyn

March 31, 2011
Thursday, 6-10PM

Having followed the poetry scene on both sides of the Hudson for years, it was inevitable that I would come to know the poets paired for this interview.  In 2010, I met George Wallace at the Bowery Poetry Club where he was host for that Sunday afternoon’s reading.  I immediately appreciated the excitement he generated and the encouragement he offered to the features and those, like me, who would participate in open mic.  I met Romanian-born poet Claudia Serea at the Williams Center in Rutherford, New Jersey in 2010.  There, I was surrounded by poets who would eventually offer to publish her work and mine in the same Red Wheelbarrow anthology that year.  When I learned that the two poets knew each other too, they became perfect candidates for the artist-to-artist interview series.  Claudia would ask George to decode poetryland and George would oblige, revealing a mindfulness about poetry that straddles high and low culture, emphasizing the roles of plurality, craftsmanship and discovery.

George Wallace is the 2011 Writer-in-Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace.  He is currently on tour promoting Walt Whitman and Beyond—Fanfares for the Common Man both stateside and overseas.  He is the author of 19 chapbooks of poetry, professor at Pace University in New York, a well-known and highly regarded poetry promoter.  Here, he is interviewed by Romanian-born poet Claudia Serea whose work and translations have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Mudfish and 5 a.m. and is the author of two poetry collections.

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NYC based artist Paul Chan developed his own version of Plato’s original texts, with an erotically-dry and roboticized humor, that probably only New Yorkers can appreciate. The artist created a set of computer fonts named “erotic idiolects” – an evaluation of the conventional alphabet churning in an endless prose. Before you download the contents onto your Kindle, best to hear it live from the author himself.

Reading:

Tuesday, March 29, 7PM

Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery (New York and Berlin)

An exhibition of twenty-eight truly incredible, even mind-boggling, drawings by an obscure outsider artist was hardly what I expected to find in the parquet-floored galleries of the Upper East Side. First of all, I must preface that I abhor the term “outsider art,” but Schroder-Sönnenstern certainly was never in the ‘front line’ of his contemporaries, and after a little research, I came to learn that he was socially obscure and ostracized. This is visible in his drawings on view (all pencil and colored pencil on cardboard), which are strange and fantastical. As Jean Dubuffet would describe Art Brut (or Outsider Art), these drawings were created from “unselfconscious imagery born of pure, uninhibited expression.” Continue Reading More »

Maria Petschnig "De Niña a Mujer" 2010 Digital video, 11:12 minutes (Video still)

I’ve had bad timing with viewing some recent exhibitions in the Lower East Side. I want to be able to write about the fantastic shows that I saw in order to encourage others to go and experience the same, however, they all seem to be closing this week!

I was lucky enough to catch Maria Petschnig at On Stellar Rays, which had already been extended through March 19. In the video, De Niña a Mujer, the viewer is invited into the apartment of Viktor, a Russian New-Yorker who produces elaborately-staged (yet with a low production value) softcore porn. His models, several thirty-something Russian women (who also include Petschnig), appear comfortable and relaxed with the gentle –even silly– man as he helps them put on, shall I say unique, costumes. Oddly enough, this is the sort of behind-the-scenes behavior I would expect on the set of a pornography, whether softcore or hardcore; the relationship between Viktor and the woman is desexualized, and almost familial. Viktor’s final product is a photograph, which seems cold and distant compared to the more intimate moments between producer and actress/model that Petschnig captures in this video. Continue Reading More »