The space will be setup as a communal workroom. There will be a table arranged, upon which will be stacked ordered, chronological piles of all the documentation collected from the three projects illustrated in this book. These articles can be collated and rearranged in any manner that the participants determine. The group can cut, rearrange, photocopy, and so on, any or all of the documentation components according to the materials and equipment available.

Manifesto for limited communication

An evening dinner/event facilitated by Brooke Shanti Fenner and Oliver Cloke

PART 2 of The Make Conversation Series 

Monday 23^rd January, 7pm (SHARP)

Open Archive, 97 Nicholson Street, Abbotsford, VIC, Australia

‘The Make Conversation Series’ is a four-part project of Monday dinner events facilitated by Brooke Shanti Fenner (and collaborators). For ‘Manifesto for limited communication’ Brooke collaborates with Oliver Cloke. The discussion is informed and fuelled by a collaboratively-activated, generative, linguistic tool, best described as an expanded crossword that utilises the participants for both the clues and the content. Further information on ‘The Make Conversation Series’ can be found in previous posts http://openarchiveabbotsford.com

All are welcome and a vegetarian dinner will be provided. Feel free to bring a plate of your own to share and BYO drinks! RSVPing to brookefenner@gmail.com is encouraged to determine catering capacity. For further information please refer to: openarchiveabbotsford.com or contact Brooke on: 0423 487 233

How much time do we spend looking at a work of art when we’re in a museum or gallery? Do we really take the time to reflect and let the work sink in? Or do we simply breeze by in an effort to see as much as possible? Some studies suggest that the average visitor only spends about 5 seconds looking at each work, but Mexican media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has found a different way of measuring this interaction.

Lozano-Hemmer’s new installation Tape Recorders takes a more physical approach to calculating the answer to this question. Composed of a series of automated measuring tapes fixed to a wall, the tape ascends to the ceiling when visitors are present, tipped-off by a Kinect sensor. Once it reaches its peak, the tape crashes down, unable to hold itself up any longer, and is then reeled back in. Visitors can walk past the full spectrum of tape measurers, making them grow in succession as if performing the “wave,” or stand in front of one to force it to its crashing point. It also tabulates the collective time spent in front of the installation and prints out the summation every hour.

The installation’s awareness of its visitors seemingly has the effect of making them stay longer, incentivizing their attention with the tapes’ impending crash and recoil. Since the presence of people is required for the installation to activate, audience participation and appreciation is crucial to the piece—it would’t work otherwise. The longer visitors interact with the work, the more interesting it becomes.

Tape Recorders, along with several other works by Lozano-Hemmer, will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney through February 12th, 2012.

Artist Measures Visitor Attention Span With Kinect-Powered Tape Measurers
Dylan Schenker

“The Collector’s Show: Chimera” opened at the Singapore Art Museum over the weekend, during Art Stage Singapore. It is a group show of works from private collections around the world, with Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and other well-known artists represented.

Siu Li Tan, assistant director and curator of the Singapore Art Museum, talks about the idea behind the exhibition, the role of the collector and what piece was the hardest to get.

Why “Chimera?”

“Chimera” has multiple meanings, and is simultaneously evocative of a sense of mystery, danger and illusion. It fits in well with the kind of tone and experience I wanted to convey with this exhibition, which I hope will seduce its viewers at the same time as it disturbs and challenges them.

What piece proved to be the most complicated to bring into the show?

I am particularly happy that we managed to secure Rashid Rana’s “Red Carpet IV.” Since he has done [more than] a couple of “Red Carpets,” you would think that getting one for our show would be relatively easy, but it was far from the case. The works we wanted were either on exhibition elsewhere, or the dates were not good (since the works were needed for another show somewhere else), or collectors were simply reluctant to let the works leave their living rooms. We met with a lot of dead ends, and it took some persistence (and taking calls in the middle of the night), but we managed to locate an edition of “Red Carpet IV,” and the collector very generously agreed to lend it to us.

In Asia, some say private collectors are more influential than museums, especially for contemporary art. What do you think of this?

I have been watching with interest the recent mushrooming of private museums and art foundations across Asia. Some of these have been established with very clear aims and ambitions in mind: Besides serving as an exhibition platform for new art forms, these private museums or foundations are also committed to nurturing an appreciation and understanding of contemporary art with their education and outreach initiatives.

At the same time, however, a number of other private museums exist purely to house their founders’ expansive collections, and are not exactly accessible to the public. This is where an institution like SAM can play a role — in bringing together, in a single venue, important or interesting works of art drawn from these private collections.

It remains to be seen how this recent trend of private museums develops in this region, for it has enormous potential to shape the contemporary art scene — given the lack of public art institutions with the means and/or inclination to exhibit contemporary art. I can’t help but think about the FACE (Foundation of Arts for a Contemporary Europe) model, where an alliance of art foundations established by private collectors organizes exhibitions which draw on works from their collections and which travel around the different country venues. Imagine what a similar model could do for contemporary art in Asia.

At a time when museum budgets, especially for acquisitions, in established museum-going societies in Europe and North America are being slashed, what is the role of collectors? Should museums bother to build permanent collections?

Increasingly, collectors are stepping in to take up roles formerly associated with museums or art institutions, for example, that of championing and promoting new art and artists. In recent years, there have been a number of art prizes and awards funded by private collectors, which aim to identify and groom the next generation of artists. Take, for instance, the Future Generation Art Prize, established by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation. Finalist artists this year were given an exhibition as a fringe event of the Venice Biennale, no doubt raising their profile greatly, and winners are paired up with “mentor artists,” who are stars of the contemporary art world.

It is also true that in Europe and North America, many museums are being priced out of contemporary art acquisitions, with a number of “star” pieces entering private collections rather than museum collections. A number of collectors do choose to donate major works to museums, particularly in America where there is a strong culture of philanthropy. In Europe, quite a number of collectors have opted to establish their own private museums with collections to rival those of public museums. Think of Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana in Venice.

The situation in Southeast Asia is a little different, although the question of whether museums should have permanent collections or not is something we have also discussed at SAM. For us there was never any doubt that we needed to build a permanent collection of Southeast Asian contemporary art, so as to ensure that we would be able to preserve and present the art coming out of our region to audiences not just in Singapore but in the rest of the world as well.

Before the 2000s, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan and Queensland Art Gallery in Australia collected a fair bit of Southeast Asian art, but they have since either shifted their collection focus or realigned their priorities. It is therefore important to us at SAM that we collect important works of our time before they disappear into private collections, and become difficult to access in future.

It is also in our national interest to build a strong permanent collection of Singapore and Southeast Asian contemporary art, because we want Singaporeans to be able to look at and understand themselves and their neighbours beyond what they read in the papers and see on TV. Art is often a reflection and critique of society, albeit in a creative or philosophical way, and provides us with a different lens through which we can study and understand society and the world around us.

One of the possible issues with collectors is that some of them may also be active art investors. Given how lively the Asian auction market is, and the international art world’s experience with the Estella Collection, how do you as a curator negotiate this?

This happens everywhere, not just in Asia. And if a work of art or an artist is good, or interesting, then the work will appeal to curators and collectors alike, and it will be featured in museum presentations as well as at auction. As curators, we are primarily concerned with the significance and merit of an artwork, not its market value.

Having said that, I should point out that museum curators do tend to go for rather different works as compared to collectors or speculators, many of whom will choose to pass up on more challenging or strident works, or works in mediums that are difficult to “collect,” such as performance or a large immersive/site-specific installation.

As far as possible, as curators we do try to work with collectors whom we know are “serious” about their art collections. Many collectors we work with are established, and will almost never part with the works they own.

By Alexandra A. Seno
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2012/01/16/are-collectors-more-important-than-museums-one-curators-take/?mod=djemSceneA

In March 2011, an anonymous artist left the first of ten intricate paper sculptures at various arts based locations around Edinburgh, Scotland. The Scottish Poetry Library found a paper sculpted tree mounted on a book with a tag addressed to the library’s Twitter name. The tag read: “It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.… … We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books… a book is so much more than pages full of words.… This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas….. a gesture (poetic maybe?)”
Other sculpture gifts and notes followed. In June 2011, the National Library of Scotland received a sculpture of a gramophone and then Edinburgh’s Filmhouse found a tiny cinema made of books. In July, the Scottish Storytelling found a paper dragon sitting on a window sill. In August, two more sculptures appeared at the Edinburgh Book Festival, and another at the Central lending library. In September, more sculptures were found and a final one with a note indicating the completion of the artists journey:
“It’s important that a story is not too long ……does not become tedious …….You need to know when to end a story,’ she thought. Often a good story ends where it begins. This would mean a return to the Poetry Library. The very place where she had left the first of the ten. Back to those who had loved that little tree, and so encouraged her to try again …….and again. Some had wondered who it was, leaving these small strange objects. Some even thought it was a ‘he’! ……. As if! Others looked among Book Artists, rather good ones actually…….But they would never find her there. For though she does make things, this was the first time she had dissected books and had used them simply be- cause they seemed fitting….Most however chose not to know….. which was the point really. The gift, the place to sit, to look, to wonder, to dream….. of the impossible maybe…….A tiny gesture in support of the special places…..So, here, she will end this story, in a special place … A Poetry Library ….. where they are well used to ‘anon.’”

http://www.dailyartfixx.com/2011/12/07/anonymous-paper-sculptures-edinburgh-scotland/

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy reading David Hockney’s recent comments on the art world, specifically those aimed at Damien Hirst.

As The Guardian reported it, Hockney used a small note on the posters for his coming exhibition at the Royal Academy – “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally” — to send a dart at the “creator” [my quotation marks] of the diamond-encrusted skull (For the Love of God), which is among so many other works made by others but presumably conceived by Hirst. Hirst will have a show at the Tate beginning in April, filled with art made by his assistants.

Hockney also said, “I used to point out, at art school you can teach the craft; it’s the poetry you can’t teach. But now they try to teach the poetry and not the craft.”

Interpreted by Richard Dorment of the Daily Telegraph, Hockney is “saying that students used to be taught how to draw perfectly at the expense of their individuality. Now scores of students graduate from art colleges believing that everything they do or touch or say can be labelled a work of art but they couldn’t draw a rabbit if you held a gun to their heads. (Dorment goes on to say that he doesn’t care how a piece is made, as long as it has the poetry.)

This conversation reminded me of an interview I did about 15 months ago with Ndidi Ekubia, a British Nigerian silversmith whose work was included in The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2010. She’d just returned from a day at the Frieze Art Fair in London when we talked, and she couldn’t help remarking, she said, on how poorly made so many of the art works on view were. Nevermind their “poetry” (which I inferred she was not fond of, for the most part), she was dismayed by their craft. She felt that makers of what today is called “design,” were more careful about quality than makers of “art.”

Of course, that’s not all that is wrong with some art of today. Another conversation I had recently has also come to mind — with a museum director, who must remain nameless because we were speaking on background. S/he [I am not revealing the gender] was so very disappointed by the show of Dale Chihuly at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, because s/he had been a proponent of his decades ago — but now feels the work is bereft of ideas.

The art world is not the only place these issues have surfaced. (‘Twas ever thus?) In his recent blog post on Brainstorm, David Barash discusses the dearth of the “Novel of Ideas,” which he prefers to mere stories. As he notes, “Many of the towering works of 19th century literature (from Hugo and Zola to Dostoyevsky and Turgenev), which to my mind represent a novelistic high point, seem explicitly concerned with making a point or generating intellectual debate, and not simply hoping to entertain or just to portray accurately a ’slice of life.’ “

I suppose the best art has poetry, craft and ideas, and the people who make that kind of art are the artists that will be remembered for their work. Will either Hockney or Hirst qualify?

David Hockney RA — A Bigger Picture opens on Jan. 21.

REAL CLEAR ARTS
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Guardian

FANCY stealing a Banksy, with no consequences other than not being able to keep it? The renowned and highly sought-after English street artist will have a work, No Ball Games, on display from today across the three Art Series hotels in Melbourne – The Cullen, The Blackman and The Olsen – with guests at the respective hotels being offered the chance to, well, nick it – if they can find it. A clever marketing ploy, for sure, but the StealBanksy concept is in keeping with the artist’s guerilla approach – he’s been known to subversively insert his work into exhibitions, and has made a career of stencilling in places where it was least expected, Melbourne included. His anonymity has helped, fuelled in no small part by the hugely entertaining 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, in which he appears in shadow with his voice digitally altered.

The deal is this: hotel guests are invited to find the artwork – one wouldn’t think it will be hanging in the lobby by the door – steal it, and if they’re caught it’s returned to the wall; if they’re successful in stashing it until the January 15 deadline, then they get to keep it – a reasonable outcome for a work that’s valued at $15,000. Obviously, there are rules. As the terms and conditions state: ”If we catch you, and ask you to stop and put it back, then you have to stop and put it back. Don’t steal or damage anything else in the hotel, be a polite, respectful and sophisticated art crook with an eye for a good Banksy and the whole thing will work a treat.” The best bit: ”Be cool. Art thieves are always cool.”

Here’s hoping it won’t suffer the same fate as an earlier work along similar lines. In 2007 in London, keen ”thieves” took to a wall on which Banksy had stencilled No Ball Games, removing a section with an angle grinder.

See stealbanksy.com.au

Gary Munro, The Age, December 15, 2011