NEWSgrist - where spin is art

bad at sports presents Episode 112: Trevor Paglen/ Pate Conaway

via badatsports.com, additional links provided by newsgrist:

Episode 112: Trevor Paglen/ Pate Conaway

This week: Marc and Brian talk to Trevor Paglen.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD:
Bad_at_Sports_Episode_112_Paglen-Conaway.mp3 

"Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. His work involves deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us. His most recent projects involve close examinations of state secrecy, the California prison system, and the CIA's practice of "extraordinary rendition."

Paglen's visual work has been shown in galleries and museums including MASSMOCA (2006), the Warhol Museum (2007), Diverse Works (2005), in journals and magazines from Wired to The New York Review of Books, and at numerous other arts venues, universities, conferences, and public spaces. He has had one-person shows at Deadtech (2001), the LAB (2005), and Bellwether Gallery (2006).

Paglen's first book, Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights (co-authored with AC Thompson; Melville House, 2006) was the first book to systematically describe the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. His second book, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me (Melville House, 2007) an examination of the visual culture of "black" military programs, will be published in November 2007. He is currently completing his third book, entitled Blank Spots on a Map, which will be published by Dutton/NAL/Penguin in late 2008/early 2009.

Paglen has received grants and commissions from Rhizome.org, the LEF Foundation, and the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology. In 2005, he was a Vectors Journal Fellow at the University of Southern California.

Paglen holds a BA from UC Berkeley, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley."

NEXT: Terri and Serena talk to Pate Conaway.

"Pate Conaway is an interdisciplinary artist from Chicago, Illinois. Conaway sees the act of art-making as a performance in itself. Conaway has produced art in gallery situations, including during a five-week stint at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago where he knitted a pair of nine-foot-long mittens. The artist, whose background is in performance and paper arts, continues to work in sculpture, installation, and interactive performance. Now learning to sew, Conaway is fascinated by the idea of applying garment construction techniques to bookbinding. Pate Conaway is a graduate of Chicago's Second City Training Center and received his MFA from Columbia College, Chicago. He has exhibited extensively in the mid-west and his work can be found in the Artist Book Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago."

AND Mike B. has a rant to offer.

NAMES DROPPED:
Trevor Paglen; University of California, Berkeley; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; 1984; Area 51; Eyebeam; The Atlas Group; Bellwether; Cloud Gate; Mayor Daley; Damien Hirst; Pate Conaway; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Green Leaf Art Center; Margin Gallery

Warm Regards,

The Bad at Sports Editorial Team

Up Close + Personal: Socially Networking the Museum

At the Walker's opening for "Picasso and American Art" last June, visitors posed for digital photos that were manipulated with a "cubism effect" and posted on Flickr within minutes.
COURTESY WALKER ART CENTER, MINNEAPOLIS

via the October issue of ARTnews, additional links courtesy of newsgrist:

Nonsmoking Capricorn Museum Seeks Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends
Institutions are using MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking Web sites to reach new people and forge virtual communities
by Carly Berwick

In the spring of 2006, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis scheduled a concert by Sunn O))), an experimental noise band with an art-world following. The center listed the upcoming performance on its Web site's calendar and blog pages and, for the first time, on the MySpace page the museum had launched just a few months earlier. With no other promotion, the show sold out within days. It was an unusually direct example of the marketing power of MySpace, says Robin Dowden, director of the Walker's new-media initiatives. "Social networking sites present an opportunity to build a larger presence online and find audiences."

Like many struggling musicians and artists, institutions have come to realize that a Web site alone is not enough to attract attention online. As more people log onto MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr to look up their friends, seek out others with similar interests, and make evening plans, museums are jumping onto social networking sites to extend their cyberpresence. The sites are the latest answer in a long-running institutional debate over how best to exploit the potential of the Internet for marketing, community building, and staging art projects.

People meeting people is still the basic principle that drives networking, online or off. Social networking sites merely offer a new means of encountering like-minded souls. They allow members to post personal profiles and link to the profiles of other users who acknowledge them as friends, thereby creating webs of connections.

Institutions start to look like individuals when posting profiles on MySpace. The Walker identifies itself as an 80-year-old woman interested in "community engagement and enrichment"; New York's Printed Matter bookstore appears as a 31-year-old woman whose heroes are artist Sol LeWitt and critic Lucy Lippard, the store's founders; and Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum is a 79-year-old man who is interested in "superstars." And they have friends, lots of them.

This summer the number of people linking to the Warhol Museum's MySpace page passed 10,000. The profile was first posted in November 2004 by visitor services manager Glenn Wonsettler, who himself had recently joined MySpace. "I thought this would help us beyond press materials," he says. "I try to make it a bridge to the museum and Web site."

Wonsettler filled out MySpace's basic online form and soon was receiving up to 40 requests a day to approve other users as friends. Now any visitor to the Warhol Museum's MySpace page can click on the links to its many friends and check out their profiles. Equally important, Wonsettler can regularly send the friends bulletins about upcoming events or news of discounts at the online store. Last year he sent out a group mailing asking for photo-booth portraits, and within three days 200 people had e-mailed their pictures. Those are now posted in the photos section on the museum's page.

One of the Warhol Museum's friends is Elizabeth Starkey, a 25-year-old video and mixed-media artist in Atlanta. She has been to the museum only once, when she was 12, but she says that visit made her decide to go to art school. She added the museum as a friend on MySpace, she says, "to see what it considers noteworthy in the art world." Befriending a museum online is also good marketing for artists, who expand their network to Web surfers who can click from the museum's page onto the artists' personal pages to see videos or images posted there.

For Wonsettler the Warhol Museum's MySpace page is essentially a low-maintenance marketing tool, but for Shelley Bernstein, the Brooklyn Museum's manager of information systems, the social networking sites help forge a virtual community just as vital as those off-line. "I started looking at what community means on the Internet, and to me, it was very obvious that it meant going onto these sites," she says. Maintaining multiple pages on the different networking sites is, in effect, conducting community outreach; drawing some of the museum's thousands of online friends to the building to raise admissions is not her goal. "The day that that becomes important is the day we are not acting as part of that Web community and we fail." Bernstein set up a MySpace profile for the museum last year and has since joined Facebook and Flickr.

MySpace is the largest social networking site, with approximately 66 million users, according to a recent Newsweek article. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought the site in 2005, its cachet slipped somewhat. Facebook started as a networking site for college students and opened its portals to everyone earlier this year. Still independently owned, it has overtaken MySpace as the "in" gathering place for the mostly young users of the social networking sites. Flickr, by contrast, is principally a photo storage and sharing site that allows members to create groups in which other members can post images.

MySpace lets users send automatic bulletins about upcoming events to all of their friends, whereas Facebook only notifies friends that a profile has been updated; users themselves must check for news. Bernstein notes that it is important to understand how this difference affects the tone in each community. "On MySpace you've got a lot of self-promotion going on," she says. "On Facebook it's practically the opposite. They like to keep it a small group."

A MySpace bulletin will result in a rise in traffic, according to Bernstein, who can tell which outside site, or referrer, has led each visitor to the museum's Web site. She can also tell how much traffic is drawn to different parts of its MySpace page. The most visited, or clicked on, section posts photographs from events at the museum, such as its First Saturday parties. But Flickr, where the museum displays a more extensive selection of event photos, has become one of the top referrers, surpassing MySpace and nearly matching Google. Both the Web and the museum world are "very visual cultures," observes Bernstein. Of all the social networking sites, Flickr, with its straightforward emphasis on photographs, tends to feed that hunger for images best, she says.

Joining the networking sites costs nothing, but maintaining the pages takes staff time. So why make the investment? "Mostly for the referral traffic, plus, to be on the edge of things," says Jennifer Rossi, the webmaster at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. "The first month we put up our MySpace page, we had more referrals from there than from the Smithsonian, our host Web site." Belonging to a social networking site also helps boost the museum's presence in the minds of the desirable 18-to-35 age demographic.

Rossi delegates maintenance of the MySpace page to museum interns, and each changes its focus slightly. Lately, the MySpace page has been used to promote the Hirshhorn's After Hours parties. The most recent gathering drew 2,000 people, up from 1,400 earlier in the year.

While one draw of these sites is the chance to make contact with the vast pool of users, the next generation of networking may be about connecting with smaller groups of people with more specific interests. When the Walker created a place for staff to write about the institution and the art world on its blogs, the museum also launched a networking site for Minnesota artists and the local arts community. The blogs have since become the most visited part of the Walker's Web site, and MNartists.org is an active hive of information about events and grants, as well as a place to share work. (The Walker was one of the first museums to recognize that viable art existed online; in 1998 it acquired the ada'Web site, an archive of early Net art.)

Commercial entitites are taking notice of the possibly lucrative art niche as well. In 2005, while waiting to move into a new space, the Saatchi Gallery launched a Web site to promote its art and allow artists and galleries to set up shop on individual pages. Lacking user-to-user links, the site is not technically a networking site, but its message boards allow open discussions of work, and the site draws millions of hits daily. And as this article went to press, Steven Henry Madoff, a former ARTnews executive editor and Time Inc. consultant, had just launched artCloud.com, a social networking site directed at artists, curators, collectors, and museums. It allows users to create portfolios, view new and popular works, search services and job listings, and keep a date book of events.

Whether using targeted sites like artCloud or one of the most visited sites in the world such as MySpace, museums are seeking to bring in as many people as possible. It's just that these visitors may not be walking in the front door anymore.

Where to Meet Warhol's Wig

Walker Art Center 
• Gender: "Female"
• Age: "80 years old"
• Here for: "Networking, dating, serious relationships, friends"

Andy Warhol Museum
• Orientation: "Not sure"
• Interests: "Superstars"
• Motto: "In the future everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes"

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
• Occupation: "Museum"
• Videos: 5
• Friends: 521, including one called "Andy Warhol's Wig"

Tate Gallery
• Mood: "Energetic"
• Interests: "Art, music, film, events, talks, performances"
• Hero: "Turner (of course!)"

Brooklyn Museum
• Photos: 2,123
• Albums: 37, including "Staff Art 2007" and "Behind the Scenes: The Dinner Party"

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Favorite music: "Anything from John Cage to Björk"
• Would like to meet: "People who like modern and contemporary art, or want to learn more about it" • Body type: "More to love"

Guggenheim Museum New York
• Status: "Single"
• Zodiac Sign: Libra
• Friends: 2,371

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
• Opening line: "A vivacious 74-year-old"
• About me: "The cheapest date in town"
• Would like to meet: "Art enthusiasts, people who think they might like art, people who aren't sure if some contemporary art is art"

Metropolitan Museum
• Postings by the student members of the Met's College Group
• 256 pictures in 6 albums
• Parties from "An Evening of Togas, Myths, and Muses" to "Black, White, and Modern All Over"

Carly Berwick, an ARTnews contributing editor, writes about art for Bloomberg News and many other publications.

Conceptual Terrorists: "absolutely no regard for American tastes"

The Sears Tower

via The Onion, Security Watch:

Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower In Jell-O
October 15, 2007 | Issue 43/42

CHICAGO—In what is being called the first conceptual terrorist attack on American soil, the landmark Sears Tower was encased in 18 million tons of strawberry gelatin early Monday morning, leaving thousands shocked, angry, and seriously confused.

Authorities called to the scene of the senseless attack said they could do little to control the large crowds of dangerously bewildered citizens, many of whom searched desperately for some semblance of meaning in what had just taken place. As of press time, 11 night security guards were still trapped inside the famous structure, their rescue unlikely until the Jell-O melts.

"My God, it's just awful," said commuter Nick Dawson, one of countless Chicago residents who struggled to comprehend what had occurred. "Why would anyone do something like this?"

Tentative speculation that the dessert enclosure was in fact an act of terrorism was quickly confirmed after a group known only as the Prophet's Collective took credit for the attack in a three-hour-long video that surfaced on the Internet.

"Your outdated ideas of what terrorism is have been challenged," an unidentified, disembodied voice announces following the video's first 45 minutes of random imagery set to minimalist techno music. "It is not your simple bourgeois notion of destructive explosions and weaponized biochemical agents. True terror lies in the futility of human existence."

According to a 2007 CIA executive summary, the terrorists responsible for masterminding the attack are likely hiding somewhere in Berlin's vast labyrinth of cafés. Though officials said they didn't know if any of those involved in carrying out the plot were still in Chicago, several dozen local performance artists and interpretive dancers have been brought in for questioning.

"We believe that this is the same group responsible for the 2005 Saran-wrapping of the American embassy in Paris," CIA director Michael Hayden said. "This is an extremely dangerous organization with absolutely no regard for American tastes and sensibilities. If left unchecked, it could forever change the face of contemporary terrorism."

Hayden said the CIA is working closely with the National Endowment for the Arts to cut off all grants that may serve as funding for the group. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has begun monitoring any large purchases of gravy, tinfoil, pig's blood, and barbed wire in hopes of preventing another aesthetic tragedy.

"We are calling upon all citizens to remain vigilant during this difficult and utterly peculiar time," Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley said during a press conference earlier today. "The city needs your help to ensure that the disturbing message sent to us by these terrorists today, whatever it was, never happens again."

"If you see something weird, say something," Daley added.

While officials have yet to determine the purpose of the attack, a number of potential theories have emerged, including the sudden deregulation of the U.S. economy, the destruction of culturally significant landmarks, and maybe the fact that man, in his essence, is no more than a collection of irrational fragments, incapable of finding reason where no reason exists.

A secret communiqué leaked by the Prophet's Collective, however, decries these theories and several others as being "completely off," and goes on to call the American people "cultural infidels."   

Though many Chicago residents are still attempting to wrap their heads around the attack, some in the Windy City have refused to classify the Jell-O encasement as a terrorist act at all.

"I'm no expert, but I know terrorism when I see it," said Kathy Atwood, a Hyde Park mother of four. "Where is the devastating loss of life and massive destruction of infrastructure? This doesn't move me to run for my life at all."

She added: "Real terrorism takes years of training and meticulous planning. My 6-year-old kid can make Jell-O."

The DHS said it has taken additional measures to secure the Brooklyn Bridge following today's Jell-O attack, as initial evidence suggests that the New York landmark may or may not be the site of "found terrorism."

Condom-licious?

via VisualAIDS >blog, posted by Nelson Santos on October 16, 2007 at 09:42 AM [hey Nelson, where did this come info and the images from?]:

Condom Fashion Show in China

Models parade in outfits made of condoms during a fashion show at the 4th China Reproductive Health New Technologies & Products Expo in Beijing July 11, 2007. Condoms of all shapes and sizes were used to make dresses, hats and even lollipops. Models fought through extravagant soap bubble special effects to show off tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms.

The show was held at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and organized by China's largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It also marked World Population Day, organized annually by the U.N. Population Fund.

 

 

Models parade in outfits made of condoms during a fashion show at the 4th China Reproductive Health New Technologies & Products Expo in Beijing July 11, 2007. Condoms of all shapes and sizes were used to make dresses, hats and even lollipops. Models fought through extravagant soap bubble special effects to show off tight-fitting wedding gowns, scaly-looking evening dresses, outrageous bikinis and other garments made entirely of condoms.

The show was held at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo and organized by China's largest condom manufacturer, Guilin Latex Factory, to promote the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS. It also marked World Population Day, organized annually by the U.N. Population Fund.

 

 

Emperor's New Notes (another "free" money project)

Right after posting Sal Randolph's Free Money project I came across this, via Paul Flannery, October 15th, 2007:

Emporers [sic!] new notes

   1. Chapman brothers offer to draw on any form of currency with the Queen's head on it for free.
   2. Collectors, critics and show-offs hand over crisp ne'er before used £20 note.
   3. Artists hand over a £10 one.
   4. and students £5
   5. Chapman’s draw 100 (-ish) of these a day over 4 days.
   6. £4,800 (at a £12 average) is removed from circulation and effectively spent on an artwork which no one has paid for.