NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Found Art (Bowery): Unmonumental 37

Found Art (Bowery): Unmonumental 37, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 36

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 36, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Dara Friedman: Musical To My Ears

We managed to catch Dara Friedman's tremendous "Musical" on its last day at Gavin Brown. Words fail me; this is the most incredible thing I've scene in an art gallery -- ever. If it screens anywhere again, just go. Ken Johnson's Times review is here; the Public Art Fund page for it is here; and below is an excerpt from a longer article about the project's genesis as a live performance piece that captures the feel of it, published in the NYTimes last year:

An image from "Musical."

Turning All of Manhattan Into a Broadway Stage
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Published: September 29, 2007

Grand Central Terminal, 3:30 on a recent afternoon. Tourists move in tentative orbits around the main concourse. Executives dart to ticket windows, luggage rolling behind them. And a pretty young woman in a button-down wool sweater and houndstooth skirt steps out on one of the stairways, and begins to sing.

"I used to visit all the very gay places," she begins, "Those come-what-may places/Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life."

The song is Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," and the singer is the 23-year-old Grace McLean. She is one of the stars of "Musical," a film project, concert, sociology experiment or series of happenings, however you want to look at it.

You may even have seen it over the past two weeks, or heard it over the usual concert of trucks and horns: a soldier on Fifth Avenue two weeks ago singing about the street where you live, a man in a cape singing a traditional Korean song in Koreatown, or a woman on the Upper East Side on an otherwise quiet Tuesday night suddenly crooning about flying to the moon.

"It's some form of social protest, no doubt," explained a middle-aged man to his colleagues as the woman passed.

"Musical" is put together by the Miami artist Dara Friedman, who works primarily with film. (She has a work currently at the Museum of Modern Art and recently had a show at the Kitchen in Chelsea.) Last year Rochelle Steiner, the director of the Public Art Fund, which commissions and presents exhibitions in public spaces in New York, encouraged Ms. Friedman to do something for the fund.

Ms. Friedman didn't want to do the old projection-of-an-art-film-onto-a-screen-in-Times Square kind of thing. She was inspired by Walt Whitman's poems about Manhattan, an idea about giving what might otherwise be private and personal performances a chance to be heard in public and a memory of watching a woman break into "Amazing Grace" amid the hubbub of Grand Central years ago.

"What I'm really interested in doing," Ms. Friedman said, "is making sure the spectator pays attention, forcing you to be excited. Alter somebody's rhythm, where, all of a sudden, you're paying attention."

So arose the idea of "Musical": She would film people bursting into song all over Midtown and uptown over the course of three weeks, ending next Friday.

Ms. Friedman and people from the fund sent e-mails to friends and took out advertisements in The Village Voice, Backstage and Craigslist and on the listservs at Juilliard and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

"Sing 'your song' a cappella, with feeling, like you mean it, on the streets of Midtown," read the ads. "College students, office workers, mothers, schoolchildren, taxi drivers, doormen, tourists, divas and grandparents -- come and sing for us, in your city. Payment: $120."

Eighty or so people showed up for auditions early last month at Passerby, a bar in Chelsea (which Ms. Friedman's husband, Mark Handforth, designed). The hopefuls sang, but Ms. Friedman doesn’t really know from singing; she was looking for people who were comfortable "singing in their own space in public," performers who would not engage with the spectators but would create a little corona around themselves on a crowded sidewalk.

The singers, about 60 of them, have been performing solo and in groups at different times and places around Manhattan over the past two weeks while Ms. Friedman and her discreet crew stand a few feet away and shoot surreptitiously. She hasn't yet decided what will be done with all of the sequences.

In any case, there has already been an audience, which is also the supporting cast. The idea of the project is not to record the reactions of people walking by (that would make it merely an episode of "Punk'd") but to make them part of the project.

After all, Ms. Friedman said, just about all people have wanted at some point to sing out loud whatever they're singing inside their heads. So both the woman in Central Park who was unaffiliated with the project yet burst into song on her own, and the indifferent bystanders with headphones and cellphones shoved in their ears are part of the show, engaging with public expression in different ways.

But nobody has a perspective like the singers themselves.

[read on...]

Idiocracy in Canarsie: Orphan Works and Why We Need To Fix This

You've read my posts exhorting artists to read up on what's really at stake re: orphan works; here's a current example that illustrates how ludicrous things get when people and institutions are ruled by the fear of legal reprisal, and how the extended length of copyrights can contribute to locking up our common culture.

 

Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times. Treasures in a historical society's library.

via NYTimes:

Brooklyn Heights
A Look Back at Canarsie, Clouded by Copyright Woes
By JAKE MOONEY
Published: June 29, 2008

THE photograph, in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society, showed a group of people having drinks at Whittaker's Hotel, a long-disappeared way station in Canarsie that once served travelers bound for the Rockaways. It was just what Brian Merlis, who publishes books of historical Brooklyn photographs, wanted.

But in April, a few weeks after Mr. Merlis first saw the picture, the historical society, citing copyright concerns, rebuffed his request to use it and a second photograph -- for a fee -- for use in a forthcoming book on Canarsie, pending further research. Mr. Merlis's objections became public when he wrote a letter criticizing the decision that was published on June 12 in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. What is the point of archiving old pictures, he argued, if people can't use them?

But Deborah Schwartz, president of the historical society, in Brooklyn Heights, said Wednesday that the society was only trying to follow the letter of copyright law. The holders of the copyrights for the pictures -- one taken around 1895 and the other in the early 20th century -- are unknown, she said, and without permission from them or their estates, the photos cannot be reused for a commercial endeavor. Until, that is, they pass into the public domain, which is due to happen for the older picture in 2015, and for the newer as late as 2045.

"We would like to accommodate him, but we can't do that until we're sure that we have the copyright," Ms. Schwartz said.

"It's kind of a drag on some level," she added. "On the other hand, it's a law that's designed to protect artists, photographers, because it's their work."

Mr. Merlis, who teaches at Franklin K. Lane High School in Cypress Hills, has been producing historical books on Brooklyn, about one a year, since 1993. The books, some of which are produced with Lee Rosenzweig, are mostly a labor of love that generally make little money.

If the historical society's photos are not in the Canarsie book, he said: "Who loses out? The reader, the public, the people you want to spread the history to."

Other institutions, Mr. Merlis contended, interpret copyright law less strictly.

Copyright law is so intricate, experts say, that even many lawyers don't fully understand it. But the law generally comes into play only when a copyright holder complains. People reprinting copyrighted images, and institutions licensing them, decide for themselves how much risk of legal action they are willing to tolerate.

At the Brooklyn Public Library, Joy Holland, the manager of the library's Brooklyn collection, said she avoided acquiring photos with restrictions on their use. As for older pictures of unknown provenance, she said, the library generally assumes they can be published.

"The photographs in our collection, they were given to a public library, and I'm quite sure that the people who gave them knew that they would be used," Ms. Holland said. Still, there are exceptions, she said, adding, "Copyright law is horrendously complicated."

Ms. Schwartz, meanwhile, said the historical society was working to track down the copyright holders for the two images in question. Mr. Merlis hopes to resolve the matter soon, so he can have the Canarsie book ready in time for the holidays. His cover is already designed.

"It's a picture of the Canarsie Theater," he said. "And I know who took the picture. And I have the right to publish it."

Parsing the Perl

Some weeks back, an old friend who is particularly grumpy about the contemporary art scene/market/criticism, etc etc, sent me a long, typical piece by TNR's Jed Perl that I didn't have the stomach to read; happily, some folks have stronger stomachs:

reblogged via Artworld Salon:

Critiquing with Clenched Fists

Monday June 23, 2008 | 23:49 by Edward Winkleman in New York | permalink

Before New Republic art critic Jed Perl penned his latest insights, he visited a good number of recent exhibitions, including

* The inaugural exhibition at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
* "© Murakami" at the Brooklyn Museum
* Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Modern Art
* "Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century" at the New Museum
* "Jeff Koons on the Roof" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

and within his essay, he referenced a good number more–including some not-so-recent shows and installations (although when, if indeed ever, he visited each of these is not clear to me from his text):

* Damien Hirst in "Beyond Belief" White Cube, London
* Richard Serra at just about any museum of your choice, but in particular at Broad Contemporary Art Museum
* "Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe" at the Guggenheim
* "Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" at the Museum of Modern Art
* Tony Feher's March-April 2008 exhibition at PaceWildenstein

and yet, he found precious little in any of them that seems to have moved him. Indeed, he goes on for nearly 6000 words explaining how all he can offer "after all this museumgoing and gallerygoing, is a series of postcards about nothing written from places that felt like nowhere."

Sigh.

About three-quarters of the way through his opus, he does mention some artists he seems to like, though, including Ry Fyan, Carroll Dunham, Jess, and R.B. Kitaj (although with Kitaj, you get the sense Perl only likes him after he turned away from Pop art and embraced "tradition"). But just in case you’re not sure how he really feels about the state of contemporary art, Perl goes that extra mile to note that "you cannot possibly understand what a safe haven for frauds and con artists the art world has become."

As fate would have it, I read Perl's piece just after having slogged my way through Carlos Basualdo's essay "The Unstable Institution" (from the collection of essays "What Makes a Great Exhibition?") in which Basualdo berates the general and specialized art press for their "enormous disparity and lack of analytical rigor" in their published reactions to international art exhibitions, like Documenta and the Venice Biennale. It's not fair to Perl, I know, that his essay was the first I happened upon after encountering this charge (and Basualdo is clearly focused on what international exhibitions are attempting to do, not other types of shows), but it did lead me to read Perl's text with an eye toward judging the rigor of his analysis. I found several of his arguments rather convincing contradictions of his other assertions.

[read on...]

Eliasson's Falls

reblogged via NYTimes City Room :

June 26, 2008,  10:37 am

'Waterfalls' Display Opens on Harbor

By Sewell Chan

Olafur Eliasson's "New York City Waterfalls," at dawn. (Photo: Vincent Laforet/The New York Times)

Updated, 11:07 a.m. | "New York City Waterfalls," Olafur Eliasson's $15.5 million quartet of temporary cascades dotting the New York Harbor, formally opened on Thursday morning with a ceremony at South Street Seaport and a publicity blitz by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who criss-crossed four morning television programs to tout the installation, billed as the city's grandest public art commission since Christo and Jeanne-Claude flooded Central Park with saffron-colored fabric panels for "The Gates" in 2005.
[read on...]

More today, with lots of pics, via Curbed:

The Freakin' Waterfalls Are On: Brooklyn Bridge Edition

and

The Gates, Who? The Freakin' Waterfalls Are On!

....a few weeks ago, via Curbed: 

First Photo of an NYC Waterfall Turned On

Thursday, June 12, 2008, by Joey

---

Artist Olafur Eliasson's four NYC Waterfalls may not officially be making their debut until June 26, but why wait to get a glimpse of the soon-to-be-sensations in action? Take a look at what was going on at Pier 35 near the Manhattan Bridge. Folks: we have water. Writes our new favorite Curbed tipster: "I woke up in the wee hours last night and noticed that Olafur Eliasson was testing the waterfall on Pier 35. This craptacular photo depicts the glory. Or whatever." Sure, the strength of the stream looks like a little weak for this test, but it'll pick up once the tourists start snapping away. What's up now, Niagara?

· Waterfall Watch: We Have Really Big Pumps [Curbed]
· What an East Village Waterfall Might Look Like [Curbed]
· A Brooklyn Bridge Pop-Up Park for Waterfall Watching? [Curbed]

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 35

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 35, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 34

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 34, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

 

Scholar's Libel Lawsuit Threatens Free Speech

Image Via 

via CampusWatch - Monitoring Middle East Studies on Campus (links courtesy of newsgrist):

Middle East studies in the News

Scholarly Association Settles 'Libel Tourism' Case [incl. Joseph Massad, "Alms for Jihad," Cambridge University Press, Khalid bin Mahfouz]

by Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 18, 2008

The College Art Association has averted a so-called libel tourism action threatened against it in Britain. The threat came from an Israeli professor of art history angry over a review of her book in Art Journal, one of the association's scholarly publications. The parties agreed that the association would ask institutional subscribers to the journal to withdraw portions of the disputed article from circulation.

Gannit Ankori, chair of the art-history department at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was reportedly upset by a review of her book Palestinian Art (Reaktion Books, 2006), by Joseph A. Massad, an associate professor of Arab politics in the department of Middle East and Asian languages and culture at Columbia University, in the Fall 2007 issue of Art Journal. Mr. Massad has also been embroiled in a battle over his bid for tenure at Columbia, which was initially vetoed by a dean at the university but will undergo a second review this coming year (The Chronicle, June 6).

Mr. Massad's review, "Permission to Paint: Palestinian Art and the Colonial Encounter," is a lengthy treatment of three books on the subject. In it, Mr. Massad describes a controversy concerning Ms. Ankori's use of the work and theories of Kamal Boullata, a Palestinian painter and art historian. The disputed article does not directly accuse Ms. Ankori of plagiarism, but in her communications with the association, she argued that it was defamatory all the same.

"What I did accuse her of is appropriating ideas without crediting the person properly," Mr. Massad said in an interview. "If every academic was going to think that any critique of academic scholarship was going to have to be defended in a court of law, the state of academic argumentation would be very different."

Liberal Libel Laws

That Ms. Ankori threatened to sue over the article is a turn of events that has grown more frequent in recent years. That she was considering the prospect of legal redress in Britain is also no surprise. Libel laws in that country notoriously favor plaintiffs, even those based elsewhere (hence the term "libel tourism"). The art association, which is based in the United States, has many international members.

In February 2008, according to the association, Ms. Ankori's lawyers sent the group a letter alleging that the review "contained untrue statements and was defamatory of her and her work." The group consulted with lawyers here and in Britain, according to its executive director, Linda Downs, and decided that the cost and risk of defending a libel case there looked punishingly high.

"Ninety-eight percent of defendants on libel cases lose there," Ms. Downs said.

Major publishing houses "set aside funds for libel suits," she observed, but her group does not have such deep pockets. Even major publishers, however, have backed down when confronted with similar actions brought in British courts. Consider Cambridge University Press's decision to pulp a 2006 book, Alms for Jihad, in response to a lawsuit by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker. That book alleged that Mr. Mahfouz had financial ties to groups implicated in terrorism in Sudan and other locales in the 1990s (The Chronicle, August 10, 2007).

The Right Response?

The art association reached an agreement with Ms. Ankori's lawyers about three weeks ago, Ms. Downs said. She could not disclose the details but sent The Chronicle a copy of a statement that her group sent to its approximately 2,000 institutional members and institutional Art Journal subscribers. The statement also went to online repositories such as JStor and ProQuest that distribute the journal electronically. [read on...]

via Artforum News; from The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6/22/08:

Art Association Paid $75,000 to Avoid Libel Lawsuit

The College Art Association paid $75,000 to an Israeli scholar who threatened to bring a libel lawsuit against it in Britain, The Jewish Daily Forward reported, along with other details of a settlement agreement first reported by The Chronicle last week.

The scholar, Gannit Ankori, chair of the art-history department at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had threatened to take action over a review of her book Palestinian Art in the fall 2007 issue of Art Journal, the association’s flagship publication. The contested review was written by Joseph A. Massad, an associate professor of Arab politics in the department of Middle East and Asian languages and culture at Columbia University.

In it, Mr. Massad alleged that Ms. Ankori had appropriated the work of a Palestinian artist and art historian, Kamal Boullata, without giving him proper credit. In a letter to the association, Ms. Ankori's lawyers countered that the review contained false and defamatory statements and threatened to sue. The lawsuit was threatened in Britain, where her book had been published and where libel laws are more favorable to plaintiffs.

As part of the deal to resolve the dispute, the association issued an apology to Ms. Ankori and sent a letter to its institutional subscribers, stating that the review "contained factual errors and certain unfounded assertions." It asked them to withdraw the relevant portions from circulation.

Mr. Massad, who is embroiled in a separate tenure battle at Columbia, acknowledged minor errors in his review but stood by his work. He characterized the association's decision to settle rather than defend the review "a cowardly act." -- Jennifer Howard

Posted on Sunday June 22, 2008 | Permalink |

Comments

1. It's clear that we need a national law to ban all British libel verdicts from being enforced against Americans. No matter what side you're on, it's clear that free speech is at risk when book reviews lead to lawsuits rather than angry letters.

   -- John K Wilson Jun 23, 10:06 AM  #

2. To: John K. Wilson (#1)

   I am in full agreement with your sentiment -- however, in my opine, such a ban would also impose a de facto travel restriction -- for an "American Law" per se will have no legal validity in U.K. (or other jurisdictions), and the American found guilty (presumably in absentia), is potentially subject to arrest on U.K. soil.

   The "Settlement" given the payment, apology, withdrawal, etc., is an ipso facto acknowledgement of wrong-doing per se. -- short & simple.

   Not knowing the actual technicalities/details involved, I can't meaningfully comment on the pertinent merits/demerits -- Would the damages awarded be higher? Easier to pay a small amount then incur the cost of litigation and be proven right? Publicity is not worth the hassle? Etc, etc.

   Howsoever, in my opine a "Settlement" per se. -- based on the article's limited information, isn't the correct course of action.

   Apropos, on the issue of "Laws" and "Free Speech" -- would like to see the appropriate change in U.K. Laws (and other Nation's Laws) -- so that (per your sentiments) -- angry letters prevail over legal threats/litigation -- Maybe an International Agreement seeking such changes with agreeable safeguards, might be in order -- for the U.K. Libel Laws do have certain merits in their own right, in that they deter distortions, misrepresentations, unfounded malicious attacks, etc.

   -- zahid Jun 23, 12:20 PM #

3. I have argued in the past in the context of the Rushdie case that publications must have First Amendment protection everywhere -- as a goal of U.S. foreign and trade policy -- or that they will lose it here. This is just one more example. Perhaps we could argue that these libel judgments are a restraint of trade in ideas in violation of the WTO.

   -- Bruce Rockwood Jun 23, 12:43 PM #

4. Anyone who thinks academics is a civil profession is utterly naive. Cutthroats and scoundrels abound, chalk and blackboards, cannons and molotov cocktails.

   -- Lakashi Jawri Jun 23, 01:07 PM #

5. Not a lawyer, but I don't believe that any foreign citizen against whom an unpaid libel verdict is outstanding in Britain would in fact be liable to arrest. Neither the police nor the Crown Prosecution Service, I'm given to understand, see it as their duty to enforce the judgments of the civil courts.

   Setting aside for the moment the rights and wrongs of this particular case, I entirely agree that British libel law is out of control.

   -- Gustave Jun 23, 10:52 PM  #

Related and similar:

The San Francisco Chronicle:
Libel Tourism: Where Terrorism and Censorship Meet
Cinnamon Stillwell
Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Economist, Libel law:
Sheikh it all about
Nov 8th 2007
How far can a Saudi sheikh use English law against an American author?

The Boston Globe:
'Libel tourism' and the war on terror
By Samuel A. Abady and Harvey Silverglate, November 7, 2006

The NYSun:
Libel Suit Leads to Destruction of Books
By GARY SHAPIRO, Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 2, 2007

Here's a letter penned by Kamal Boullatta himself about the alleged plagiarism in Palestinian Art:

via umkahlil.blogspot.com:
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Kamal Boulatta: 'Gannit Ankori Plagiarized From Hard Won Research'

"SUSPIRIA" this Friday @ Deity Cellar

Newsgrist pal "Giant Pander" is DJing this friday at the bi-weekly DJ night at Club Deity : come and enjoy some lovely dance music at a charming former Synagogue in Brooklyn:

Friday June, 27 2008
SUSPIRIA
@
Deity Cellar
368 Atlantic Ave (between Hoyt & Bond), Brooklyn, New York 11217
Cost : FREE

with Carrie Whitenoise, Dennis, Giant Pander, Ladycreme, Mike McGill // A-C-G to Hoyt - Schermerhorn // F to Bergen // 2-3 to Hoyt // 4-5 to Borough Hall // B M Q R to Dekalb