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Public/Private Art at CityCenter, Las Vegas
William L. Fox
Nancy Rubins’ Big Edge dominates the drive in front of the Vitara Hotel & Spa porte-cochere.
For the next three weeks I’ll be writing from the Biosphere 2 in Arizona, where I’m staying as a writer-in-residence with the B2 Institute. More about a…
Mark Klett & Byron Wolfe: Charting the Canyon
William L. Fox
Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, 2007. Details from the view at Point Sublime on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, based on the panoramic drawing by William Holmes (1882).
William Henry Holmes, 1882. Sheets XV, XVI, XVII. Panorama of Point Sublime. From Clarence Dutton,…
The New Topographics Redux
William L. Fox
Lewis Baltz (United States, b. 1945), Jamboree Road between Beckman and Richter Avenues, Looking Northwest (detail). From the series New Industrial Parks, 1974, gelatin silver print, 6 x 9 in., gift of the photographer, George Eastman House collections © Lewis Baltz.
This f…
The World's Longest Poem, Part 2 -- Atacama Desert
William L. Fox
Photography copyright © Forrest Gander and Kent Johnson and Jacket magazine 2006
Jerry and I fly into Antofagasta at 7:30 a.m. and land on its astonishingly lunar surface. There’s no other airport like it: the blue ocean, the waves on the rocky shore, and then two hundred feet above the breakers the flat gray sands of the…
Art + Environment
Artist Jean-Claude Passes Away
Lordy Rodriguez on Surface Depth
The Nevada Museum of Art exhibition Lordy Rodriguez: Surface Depth features beautiful and fanciful maps meticulously drawn by artist Lordy Rodriguez. On Sunday, July 19, Rodriguez spoke with me about the work installed in the exhibition. Listen to the artist's comments about his work here.…Smudge
Cybernetics: Art, Design, Mathematics — A Meta-Disciplinary Conversation (C:ADM2010)
Cybernetics: Art, Design, Mathematics — A Meta-Disciplinary Conversation (C:ADM2010)
How would you like to shape and take part in a conference where the main activity is to explore by listening, talking and questioning (conversing) rather than listen to, and give, prepared lectures; and where the aim is to move forward, taking next steps as a result of these conversations, rather than reporting on the already discovered? In other words, go to a conference where the intention is to move forward by conferring.
That is the central feature of our conference — a conference of conversation, of listening, talking, and questioning. Of open minds, and delight in the un-thought-of.
And what better way to make an interesting conversation than to bring together people whose backgrounds and interests are different, yet who want to learn by listening to others, to find what can be shared? In other words, to transcend boundaries.
So we bring together practitioners and theorists who wish to explore across boundaries, from 4 different subjects. But not just any 4 subjects. Subjects that already hold conversations together in pairs: art; cybernetics; design; mathematics. With all 4 together, we have a wider conversation, greater variety.
Our 4 subjects have a special quality in common. Each is used to comment, throw light on and inform other subjects. Perhaps mathematics is the most obvious case: a subject in its own right that is used everywhere to illuminate (and make operable) other subjects. But also a subject that can comment on itself: a subject which is a meta-subject, even to itself.
Our conference is surrounded by 3 other, related events. Look on the web site, chose what you like, and come and join us at The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, from the evening of July 30 to late afternoon on August 2, with surrounding events on July 29 and 30, and August 3 to 5.
Forged Power at the ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM Tempe, AZ
FORGED POWER: Ferran Mendoza, Alvaro Sau and William Wylie
February 20 – May 29, 2010
A Moving Targets Initiative
Friday Conversations @11 series, Feb. 19
Spring Season Reception, Feb. 19 from 7-9pm
Ferran Mendoza & Alvaro Sau, Outdoors, High Definition Video, 2009
William Wylie, Carrara series, Cavatori, The Block, Dust, Friction, Digital Video, 2006
In the digital age, the way we engage with physical work has shifted drastically. Such shifts are not new and have occurred over the course of human history - from the invention of simple tools, to the industrial revolution, to our current digital society. But as technologies continue to advance, our control and power appear to diminish, not only in our work, but also of our bodies. The body’s relationship to work continues to be less physical. We use mechanical arms to lift both heavy and light objects into place, and vacuums now roam floors on their own. A document that once took the entire use of one’s arm to handwrite can now be created with light touches of computer keys. With voice activation and eye-tracking technologies entering the mainstream consumer market, the hand may soon be removed altogether from the process of work.
Spanish artists Ferran Mendoza and Alvaro Sau traveled the Basque-French border region. The artists refer to it as “this kind of frontier land which we call the outdoors,” a territory of Europe where the “most archaic ways of living coexist with the omnipresent industrial world.” Using their cameras, Mendoza and Sau captured, in high definition video, the residents of this seemingly isolated region in their daily routines and surroundings. The result of their journey is the video OUTDOORS (2008), a 56-minute work that delivers a composition of portraits. These portraits provide fleeting glimpses of individuals who take pride in their independence, work and knowhow. Their knowledge of their tools, their environment and how their bodies interact with each is clear and poetic; they perform their tasks as if every specific activity or action has been choreographed.
In the historic quarries of Carrara, Italy, the cavatori (stonecutters) have worked for centuries excavating large slabs of white marble from the earth. Through a fellowship exchange, artist William Wylie was provided the opportunity to spend time observing the everyday operations and interactions of the men who work in these famous quarries, the very quarries used by artists from Michelangelo to Louise Bourgeois. What at first appears to be a focus on machinery is soon realized to be a study of human activity and control. While trucks and machinery within these digital videos appear to struggle and battle to complete tasks, the cavatori work with their hands - making precision measurements and chiseling slight grooves. The artist captures in his Carrara series, Cavatori, The Block, Dust, and Friction (2006), the gestural engagements of the hand and body as the stonecutters work together, using signals and whistles, to coordinate their movements within the noise and chaos of the industrial site. Together these four videos demonstrate that the actions of work can be perceived as beautiful in and of themselves.
The individuals captured in these videos control their own actions by working with their hands and bodies. They do more than just push a button; they exert human energy and create an effect through the power of their own body. Retaining the capability of doing work or accomplishing tasks with the use of the physical body, their forged power is a reaffirmation of human capability.
Curated by John D. Spiak, Curator, ASU Art Museum.
The exhibition and programs are generously supported by Helme Prinzen Endowment, ASU Art Museum Advisory Board, ASU School of Art and the Department of Photography, and Northlight Gallery at ASU.
Forged Power is an ASU Art Museum Moving Targets Initiative:
http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/movingtargets/
LAND ARTS 2009 EXHIBITION at Texas Tech
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