Art

[rublev]

corporate sponsorships and reduced public funding in the arts seems pretty systemic. i remember thinking it was horribly ironic for BP to sponsor the new british museum exhibition about egypt while at the same time seeking new drilling rights (and don't forget the whole mubarak thing). ROH, national gallery, RSC etc, don't seem to have a problem either. banking and pharma sponsorship is big too.

i don't know a lot / much at all about the zabludowicz foundation but i'm generally not a fan of articles filled with accusations with not a lot of info to back them up. i mean 'laundering some very dirty money' - does the zabludowicz foundation actually launder money or is this pulled from the '101 rhetoric' book? it also seems the bulk of that argument is BDS / PACBI related (?), which says israeli cultural institutions are ‘complicit in the Israeli system of oppression' so includes all arts / education etc. this is obv a wider debate but i find a lot of the BDS approach crass and counterproductive.

anyway..




i wonder if these same people have a problem with taking UK govt money?

[bels]

I have a 40cm x 40cm frame and would like a poster to go in it. Does anyone know a website that i can search by size/format?

[bels]

It sounds like satire pirx but what am I meant to do, I've got a frame, I'd like to use it.

Having a browse through some fashion forum recommended "art" websites this morning has nearly brought me to tears though so I might just throw the frame away.

[Northwest]

Wanted to share an artist/photographer whose style I enjoy right now.



Print of this is hanging in Velouria right now, local clothing store that had art curated for Seattle Art Week. Brings something special to it when it's displayed at a larger size.



First image of hers that caught my eye. I still end up finding new things I like about it, though it seems like such a simple picture.


Feel free to explore for yourself.

Edit: I appreciate the challenge actually pirx. I've enjoyed photography for a long time, but I find that my personal photography can't evoke a sense of calm because even if I find the picture peaceful, there are memories and context that come along with it. I find that these photos can evoke a sense of calm for me (which happens to be emotionally useful to me right now) and so I am more inclined to enjoy them in that context. The second image also is a good example (for me) of the practical applications of specifically night time film flash photography. I don't think the same picture taken under the same conditions with a digital camera would bring the sense of nostalgia that I associate with that older model of car and the rare occasion that snow falls in Seattle. Especially with climate change, snow falling in Seattle is a rarer and rarer sight and I like seeing it immortalized in that way. There's a lot of personal context that changes how I view her work versus how others will view her work.

[bels]

Does anyone know of a painter, british, paints flatly photorealistic paintings of british suburbia, generally without figures, generally vaguely sanitised (no litter etc), generally overcast, was featured in Edgelands, was nominated for turner prize a while ago.

edit: george shaw

[bels]

[odradek]

[bels]

[whocares1]

[Baddarn]

took some close-ups of the Yayoi Kusama exhibition here in Stockholm!

It was really great to finally see her work in person! Super comprehensive, following her whole career with relevant art (in everything from small sketches to sculptures filling whole rooms), text and photographs from her life/studio.

[pirxthepilot]

yo this is terrific, all london/UK teens make sure you catch it:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... re-hayward

[pirxthepilot]

he is a lot better than the other guardian art critic jonathan jones who is a standing joke. but yeah its a shame those guys have that gig sewn up.

btw that show is free, so def go before everyone realises and it gets crowded out.

[bels]

[pirxthepilot]

so this is one of the films in the show, dunno who this blogger is but she describes the setup quite well. cameron jamie sticks to the story of having found this alabama subculture on youtube.. all the hayward curators believe him but none of them know anything about the internet... seems to me like he just made it up. have i just watched too many chris morris satires/ read too many obviously fabricated trend reports etc
can anyone give other examples of invented internet subcultures which then took on some kind of reality? in what form did vaporwave ever manifest itself? like a page on 4chan and then some vice editorials as far as i can see

http://inearlydiedofboredom.blogspot.co ... -film.html

[pirxthepilot]

i know nothing at all about vaporwave, just seemed like there might be affinities. can you clarify what you mean by 'invented'.. it wasn't a hoax, right? i'd like to think it was more a multiple-use category, kinda like the authorial construct luther blissett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Bl ... m_de_plume)

[stappard_]

Adam Harper (Rouge's Foam) is invariably a good start point for understanding possibly non-existent genres (nonres?) and critical approaches (also see hauntology)

http://www.dummymag.com/features/adam-harper-vaporwave

[nope]

No idea if that film is real but it's a great and not completely implausible back story. There are a completely overwhelming number of youtube videos out there from hundreds of hyper-local US dance styles, and that's before you get anywhere near the one-off routines that go with one particular song and only exist for a month or two. Juke / Jit / Jerkin / etc etc etc. Not a hoax or anything but this is a long time favourite example:



According to the description that's "Turfin" but there's no way to tell if that was a huge phenomenon in Oakland in 2009 or just those 4 guys dancing on a street corner one time. Who knows? I also remember listening to early DJ Nate and other early footwork tunes off youtube in 2008 or so and finding the supposed narrative behind them (ie "this is populist and hyper-functional music built for people to dance competitively too") extremely implausible. Or imagine not having access to the internet and have somebody explain Sissy Bounce and claim that it was a real thing. I'd be pretty sceptical.

Not entirely sure what my point is tbh. Stranger things have happened?

[mc-lunar]

[nope]

Dunno if it was the first to be playing with samples with that way, though maybe it made it a relentless focus in a way that hadn't been tapped into before. I have to admit that I don't really know a huge amount about vaporwave, I thought the prototypical example was Far Side Virtual, which is less explicitly nostalgic music samples and more plasticy 90s retro-future. If a bunch of it is closer to eccojams I'll give it more of a go, I really like that album but never got into James Ferraro. First example that leaps to mind of earlier tunes with a similar jizz to eccojams is:



Which is from 1995, and I suppose could easily be described as proto-vaporwave if you were so inclined (sample is Roxy Music - True To Life). To be fair there's no shame in jacking ideas from Wolfgang Voigt, he's a total don.

Different approach of course but much of early house and the edits that have been a strong part of it since are also all about presenting samples (up to the point of entire choruses etc) of Disco records in a way that honours them and presents them in a way that maximises their recognisability. Not so explicitly nostalgia-based though.

EDIT: will check that comp out. I actually just remembered that JF also did that BEBETUNE$ album which I really rated.

[pirxthepilot]

interesting that there's this debate about nostalgia, don't know if anyone has read this essay by jon rafman's mum that links his enterprise (as well as google archiving etc) directly with anxiety, fear of loss etc. i'm often a bit skeptical about these big picture structural/thematic readings (and in the case of this essay i particularly dislike the humanist nostalgia element.)
i often come across people who try to frame, say, proust or tarkovsky in this way and am generally able to point out important formal aspects of their work that run counter to this narrative. i'd love to hear a similar counter-reading of hydrating internet subcultures

http://www.stedelijk.nl/upload/Essay-Jo ... rchive.pdf

this would be a way better use of your time than 'old man tour of film exhibit' concept. rescue the internet from melancholia

[nope]

Think that things like the old hauntologist stuff, the vaporwave is talking about, and things like Burial (first couple albums, not so much current prog-Burial) are all quite explicitly nostalgic and you’d struggle to present a case against that without being extremely obtuse. I think the angle is not so much “is it nostalgic?” as “is it doing anything interesting with nostalgia?”, to which one’s opinion may vary.

They aren’t straightforward thinking back to happier times “I was at Helter Skelter in ’93 and it was fucking wicked m8”, but they also avoid the trap of nostalgia for things that you didn’t actually experience, which inevitably results in a horrible idealised version of the subject. See “Keep Calm & Carry On” / “I’m 14 and I think music these days sucks, wish I was born in 1960 (or whatever)” youtube comments. Instead they are being nostalgic about things you were on the periphery of, events you don’t really remember, or weren’t actually at but wished you were. It becomes impossible to unpick what you imagined they were like then (or how you remember imagining them then) from what you know about them now.

I’m sure you could make a case for that being a reaction to everything being remorselessly archived forever on Google etc but I’m also sceptical of that kind of angle. Don’t really know a lot about Jon Rafman beyond the 9 eyes thing so not really sure where he would fit into all this. Or what his mum would make of it.

[deadkitty]

http://www.vimeo.com/50992374

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3KGzS ... sp=sharing

[pirxthepilot]

i #influenced a #influencer
https://www.instagram.com/p/BKrDacnBWEJ ... seco&hl=en

also philippe parreno is best turbine hall commission so far

[pirxthepilot]

i hadn't heard of this before, interesting hoax (in line with earlier conversation about made up internet subcultures)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... r-war.html

[anshin]

what do you guys think about jon rafman? the thing is i don't like his work that much even though it seems like it should be something i would be into based on other things i like. i think i 'get' what he's going for but it just sorta comes off as flat or maybe exploitative to me. sorry not very good at writing my thoughts but you guys seem like an art-literate bunch...

[pirxthepilot]

in what way would you say it's exploitative? did you see the discussion on the previous page about vaporwave/ mining internet subcultures, he and his mum featured quite a bit.

[pirxthepilot]

...

[bels]

Did you tag me then remove the comment pirxoid? That's next level.

I was thinking specifically of something at a trendy central london gallery that had rendered figures using speech synthesizers to perform statements from people who work at content moderation centers. It felt like a mash up between an article I'd already read on twitter and the kind of videos my overwatch friends put together to make fun of each other.

Would say that I don't consider that "exploitative" but it did make the work lose a lot of it's novelty and as such I was unphased by that part of the installation.

[pirxthepilot]

i dont actually know much about rafman but i have the impression he doesn't ultimately care a lot about the 'internal' (perceived?) ethos of the internet subcultures he cannibalises, seems like he's interested in using them to explore desire, lack, essentially the same themes as sophocles, cervantes, hitchcock. in this sense he probably is exploitative (rihanna stole my seashells!!).
im glad he does though. what 'ideas' prevail on the internet? vapid new age-ness, recycled rousseau-esque ideas about nature, flaccid humanist nostalgia, etc etc.
its like that amalia ulmann instagram performance piece where the third act of the burned out kardashian wannabe story is just her getting into meditation, yoga, detox juices which is almost certainly what someone like that character would do- so its form is true to/dictated by its medium. but this makes for bad art, because... oedipus/don quixote/scotty doesn't just fall into early C21st first world teen forms of pseudo-profundity.

(having said all this, i am interested in boredom, the ambient, passive repetition etc and those things are an intrinsic formal element of the subcultures were talking about)

[bels]

The gallery was Carrol Fletcher I just remembered. William said it wasn't consistent enough to recommend but I picked it because it was mentioned on the Sydney Biennial website.