On November 1st, Laurie Anderson was honored at Legends 2011, a Pratt Institute scholarship benefit honoring icons of art and design. The Legends Awards were conceived in 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the Pratt Institute to celebrate distinguished individuals and corporations in the world of art and design, whose accomplishments and values resonate with those of Pratt Institute.
Laurie was introduced by author Salman Rushdie, and additional honorees included Juan Montoya and William Wegman.
“Laurie Anderson is one of the seminal artists of our time. Her work includes a wide variety of media: performance, film, music, installation, writing, photography and sculpture. Over the past thirty years, she has created a number of groundbreaking works ranging from spoken word performances to elaborate multimedia events. She has published six books, produced numerous videos, films, radio pieces and original scores for dance and film.”
During 70’s Croatian artist Zarko Vijatovic, now living and working in Paris, has created in a sync with a conceptual multimedia artist and director Tomislav Gotovac, a complex serial of photographies. The exhibition can be seen on 18 November 2011 – 17 January 2012 in Warshaw Art museum and You can enjoy in works of these photographers and artists in collaboration: Hollis Frampton – Carl Andre, Peter Hujar – Paul Thek, Eustachy Kossakowski – Edward Krasiński, János Vető – Tibor Hajas, Žarko Vijatović – Tomislav Gotovac, Gwenn Thomas – Joan Jonas, Gwenn Thomas – Jack Smith, Babette Mangolte – Yvonne Rainer, Shunk-Kender – Pier 18.
“The nine stories told by this exhibition each concern the meeting of a photographer and an artist. Their collaboration was sometimes one-off, sometimes it would last for years, but it always resulted in common fruit: a work of art, a process, a shared world. We are interested in the working experience of these “accomplices”, and how their collaboration shaped the work that was being created. Their role wasn’t limited to just recording, they weren’t only an extension of the documenting camera – very often the process of exchange between the photographer and the artist was highly complex and determined the project’s ultimate shape.”
The 7th Vip Zagreb Jazz Festival presented Pat Metheny Trio (Larry Grenadier – bass and Bill Stewart – drums) on 11th November in front of a huge, excited audience of Student center, with the crowd sitting on the floor! There he is: warming up!
As we stressed in the previous post Pat Metheny, throughout his career, has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.
“This is a film about everything: rich countries and poor countries, smiles and tears (quite a lot in my case, I must confess), day and night, life and death, animals and humans, man and women, whites, blacks, gays, straights, children and very old people, happiness and desperation. We are all there, with our fears, our idiosyncrasies, our routines, our doubts, our weaknesses…”
“Last year (2010) YouTube launched a campaign, supported by executive producers Tony and Ridley Scott, asking everybody with a camcorder to record a day in their lives. Fast forward a year to 2011 and director Kevin Macdonald and editor Joe Walker (never an editor has been more crucial to the making of a film), release their documentary to the world and to the same people who actually filmed it.
Apparently 80000 videos for a total of 4500 hours were submitted from 126 different nations. The result is a film that tells the story of a day on Earth, and precisely the 24th of July 2010: 24 hours in the life of ordinary people. (…)
The film starts at midnight as people are still asleep in most places: some night shift workers are already at it, some wild party animals are still up from the previous day, but generally speaking it’s a quiet start. Within a few minutes, we are treated by a sunrise montage from all over the world as people are getting up in the most remote corners of the globe.(…)
But just when you are about to think “is this film going to be just a long montage sequence?”, then the film suddenly slows down and you are actually treated to real moments into people’s life (well, I say “real”, obviously there’s a camera filming so I suppose it’s “a version of reality”, but that doesn’t diminish its value nor its emotional impact on the audience).”
The Multimedia artist Vladimir Frelih informed us, as well as Culture.net that he as a “winner of the Kulturvermittlung Steiermark Scholarship, presents his works at the solo exhibition Grosse Schritte kleine bewegung from 4th November to 20th December in Graz.
Born in Osijek in 1963, studied Sculpture/Installations at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Germany). His tutors were Professors Hoover, Paik and Jatel. He became a Master Grade student in 2001 and attended tutorial classes by Professsor Jatel. 2008 Multimedia Lecturer at the Osijek Academy of Fine Arts and leader at the Department of Art. From 1994 his work has been shown nationally and internationally at exhibitions and events.
He uses a variety of art media and techniques with reference to their structural faults and advantages. His art work has received a number of awards and scholarships and is on display in several contemporary art collections and museums. Currently based in Osijek and Düsseldorf.”
Curator of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka Sabina Salomon introduces a famous international artist Mirko Ilic at The Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Novi Sad on 25th October – 14th November, 2011.
“The exhibition THE PEACE WORKS – Mirko Ilic – Retrospective: comics / illustration / design / multimedia 1975-2011 is an artistic event that will give the audience a chance to get acquainted with the previous works of this author. Mirko Ilic published his first works in 1973, and since then has been publishing comics and illustrations in magazines, such as Omladinski tjednik, Modra Lasta, Tina, Pitanja; he has become the art and comics editor of the students’ magazine Polet in 1976. He helped to organize an informal organization of the comic book creators Novi kvadrat (The New Square), that has been widely connected to the Novi val musical movement in Zagreb.
In 1986 he left Yugoslavia and went to New York “with $1,500 in the pocket and no idea what to do upon getting there.” He soon started publishing his illustrations in Time, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other prominent and influential newspapers and magazines. In 1991, he became art director of Time International, and the following year he became art director of the op-eds in The New York Times. In 1993, Ilic became one of the co-founders of Oko & Mano Inc. graphic design studio, and in 1995 he founded Mirko Ilic Corp., a graphic design and 3-D computer graphics and motion picture title studio. In 1998, he created the title sequence for the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail.”
Renowned pianist McCoy Tyner will open the 7th annual VIP Zagreb Jazz Festival on 10 November. The festival will take place in freshly renovated Student Centre hall that can seat 1,000 people.The highlights of this year’s festival are Pat Metheny Trio, Lucky Peterson and sax player Pharoah Sanders.
McCoy Tyner Trio featuring Jose James & Chris Potter
A Contemporary Exploration of John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman
McCoy Tyner – piano, Gerald Cannon – bass, Joe Farnsworth – drums, Jose James – vocals, Chris Potter – saxophone
Pat Metheny Trio/ 11th November
w/Larry Grenadier & Bill Stewart
Pat Metheny – guitar, Larry Grenadier – bass, Bill Stewart – drums
Pharoah Sanders – Tenor Saxophone, Gregory Bandy – Drums, John Webber – Bass, William Henderson – Piano
This year the special star – Pat Metheny, throughout his career, has continued to re-define the genre by utilizing new technology and constantly working to evolve the improvisational and sonic potential of his instrument.
The prestigious American media “The Village Voice” presents Croatian curatoring of Branko Franceschi’s exhibition “Tune in Screening: Psychodelic Moving Images from Socialist Yugoslavia 1966-1976” as the best or Top Arts story in New York at the moment.
A journalist R.C. Baker explains: “Post-World War II Yugoslavia threaded a Cold War needle between the Soviet Union’s Communist hardliners and the West’s hedonistic capitalists. This national schizophrenia perhaps explains the fantastic flowering of proto-MTV films and conceptual objects created by the Slovenian avant-gardists known as the OHO Group. In 1968, an OHO founder, Marko Pogacnik, crafted a puzzle by slicing up a photo of the Rolling Stones and gluing the pieces to a dozen matchboxes. In a recent interview, the artist summed up his affecting object (which opens the exhibition): “In the same way that matches appear when one needs to build the fire, pop culture ignited our imagination.”(…)”
Although the journalist Baker writes about the cultural moment of the analysed period in the exhibition, we think that he missed so much regarding philosophy and curatorial capacity.
The Perforations Festival program spans over three cities (Rijeka, Zagreb, Dubrovnik) from October 20 – 29, 2011.The festival includes more than 15 other productions from Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia and Romania. Some of the artists are Rosana Hribar / Gregor Luštek, Mala Kline, Angelo Madureira / Ana Catarina Vieira, Manuel Pelmus, Ljiljana Tasić / Dušan Bročić, Damir Bartol Indoš, Via Negativa, etc.
The Perforations Festival takes place annually in three Croatian cities; Zagreb, Rijeka and Dubrovnik and presents a range of artists working in performance art, theater, and dance, whose diverse approaches to art-making blurs the borders between these genres. While their work touches upon issues of identity (public, political, religious, ecological), of borders redefinition and space, of a collective past, and of personal histories, most of all their work talks about the present. Highlights from this festival were presented at the LaMama E.T.C., New York, offering audiences insight into contemporary lines of artistic thinking from some of the most provocative and influential artists in the region.
The exhibition of the Croatian artist Boris Bucancalled ‘Street‘ can be seenuntil October 30 in the Croatian Glyptotheque in Zagreb .The selection andexhibition are signed by the respected academician Vera Horvat Pintaric.
“Notonly thestreet,but alsoimagination! (…) A little bitof reality anda lot of imagination. (…) Why not,Bućanimagines thatsimultaneously can seetwo skies, I guess it’son the leftside the morning sky marked withthe blue,on theright side theevening skywhen thegreatwhiteprevailesblueeveninglightat the end ofthe horizon.
One eyesees, the other changes whatisseen.We knowwho ownsthesetwo eyesandwho canchange the worldin the image. Only a selected few...”
Boris Bucan (Zagreb, 1947) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1972. His artistic practice includes drawing, graphics and graphic design. He pays special attention to the issue of the anonymous media message which he personalizes through humorous interventions in the template (Bucan Art, 1971). At the start of his career, he created posters for the Student Center in Zagreb (Galerija i Teatar ITD – Gallery and the ETC. Theatre) and Dramsko kazalište Gavella (Drama Theatre Gavella) (1967-1972). Between 1980 and 1982 he created a famous large-sized poster series recognized for their picturesque quality for HNK (Croatian National Theatre) in Split, and for the concert program of Radio-televizija Zagreb (Radio-Television Zagreb). After the series was exhibited at the 1984 Venice Biennial, Bucan earned international fame.
Also,as a part of the“Artist on Vacation” project he presented hisseries of works“Bucan Art” in seasidevillaPolensi, as a prelude toa much largerbody of work“Bucanworks” thatwill be presented in autumn, next yearat the exhibitionof pop art“The PopGoesthe World” at the Tate Modernin London, and then in thePinacotecado Estadode Sao Pauloin Brazil.
The Croatian Gallery Zitnjak invites You to a special exhibition about Art & Food connection on Saturday, 15th October, from 3 pm. till evening. The artists, as well as guests will prepare some food, while testing the recipes!
Some of the very famous Croatian artists will show their skills on preparing and tasting food:
VLASTA ŽANIĆ, MARIJAN MOLNAR, BORIS CVJETANOVIĆ, VLADIMIR FRELIH, ANTONIJA BALIĆ ŠIMRAK, VESNA POKAS, MARKO MARKOVIĆ, ZORAN PAVELIĆ, JASENKA BULJ, JASENKO RASOL, HAMO ČAVRK, DALIBOR MARTINIS, TANJA DABO, MLADEN STILINOVIĆ, BORIS SEKULIĆ, ŽELJKO BADURINA, IVANA JELAVIĆ, ANA HUŠMAN, MARIJAN CRTALIĆ, HRVOJE ŠERCAR, DENIS KRAŠKOVIĆ, ĐORĐE JANDRIĆ, MEJRA MUJIČIĆ, KATA MIJATOVIĆ, DORA KOVAČEVIĆ, VLADIMIR MEGLIĆ, ALEM KORKUT, HRVOJE MITROV, IRENA SERTIĆ, ANTUN BOŽIČEVIĆ, BOŽO KATIĆ
Although it’s the season of “sour cucumbers” and many artists are still trying to make conceptually fun of serious topics, we stay on a position of reflecting scientifically/artistic synthesis and adore deep affectionate synesthesia.
‘Tune in Screening: Psychedelic Moving Images from Socialist Yugoslavia”, the exhibiition curated by Branko Franceschi opens on 2nd October (6-9pm) in Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in New York. The exhibition is on view till 30th October.
Between 3rd and 30th October Franceschi will open a Virtual Museum of Avant-garde Art’s Overseas Headquarters located in New York’s organization Residency Unlimited. The project will function as a temporary office for meetings, open talks, and plan making regarding the museum and possible future collaborations.
Branko Franceschi is a director of the “Virtual Museum of Avant-garde Art” http://www.avantgarde-museum.com, based in Zagreb, Croatia. The Virtual Museum of the Avant-garde aims to compensate the shortcomings of virtual reality through the direct exchange of knowledge on Southeastern Europe’s avant-garde movements to professionals, artists, students and the general public of New York. “The screening focuses on experimental film production and rock music created in Yugoslavia from 1964 to 1974. The materials all indicate a degree of openness and permissiveness that characterized Yugoslavia’s brand of socialism when importing and incorporating pop and alternative culture from the West. This cultural exchange influenced local society, arts, and, especially, Yugoslavia’s lifestyle and popular culture.”
Trained as an Art Historian at the University of Zagreb, for more than 20 years Franceschi has initiated and curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art for exhibition venues in Croatia and beyond. Membership: AICA (AICA Croatia President), ICOM, CIMAM, DPUH, Advisory Committee of Art in General, New Media Commission for the Ministry of Culture Republic of Croatia (President), Gallery and Museum Program Commission for the Municipality of Rijeka (President).
The programme is realized with the support of CEC Artslink www.cecartslink.org, as well as Croatian Ministry of Culture, and the activity of “Virtual Museum of Avant-garde Art” is assissted by The Town Varazdin.
Anne Bean and the Live Art Development Agency would like to invite you to a special event, a performance by:
Vlasta Delimar and Milan Bozic
Absolute Artist (Memories and Feelings) Antonio Gotovac Lauer
On: Wednesday 12 October at 7pm.
At: Rochelle School, Arnold Circus, London E2
Antonio G. Lauer a.k.a Tomislav Gotovac (1937-2010) is representing Croatia at the 54th Biennale di Venezia in the exhibition entitled One Needs to Live Self-Confidently… Tomislav Gotovac was an avant-garde film director and performer, whose complex and multi-layered projects, combining a range of different art practices, are considered pioneering and anticipatory in the areas of structuralist and experimental film, conceptual art, body art, and performance.
International Interdisciplinary Symposium PHILOSOPHY OF MEDIA – Issues of founding, establishing and/or revelation, will be held on the Croatian island Cres between 16-18 September, 2011. Media-via portal editor M.A. Vesna Srnic is invited to present her papers “Glocal Multimedia Art” at the symposium, organised in the year in which we celebrate the centenary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan.
In front of Program comitee PhD. Divna Vuksanovic (Serbia) and PhD. Sead Alic (Croatia) stressed: “We live in a time of media intercession, networking, virtual worlds, a growing impact of mass media on politics, culture, human life, experience, or even opinions as such. We exist in a time when the immersion into the world of the mass media reminds us of the fact that we as human beings throughout history have been determined by some sort of media and that only the modern preoccupation with the (mass) media has given rise to an awareness of (partial or total) oblivion of media intercession,especially during times of oral communication, written and print form.” (…) “In this sense, the philosophy of media co-opts the scientific research of linguistics, psycholinguistics, media theory, the theory of special art, knowledge of techniques and technologies, research psychology, medicine, phonetics, cultural and visual studies, and other science disciplines, theoretical knowledge and practice experience.”tENrNp4O_ZE
Symposium sponsors are Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, Croatian National Tourist Board, Town of Cres and Hotel Kimen Cres.
The Croatian Gallery Miroslav Kraljevic opens on the 16th September the Asier Mendizabal exhibition – Landing, indicating the mechanisms of relationship between apstract modernism and ideology.
“Asier Mendizabal (Ordizia, Guipuzkoa, 1973) is one of the Basque artists of the new generation who pays most attention to the relations between form, discourse and ideology. His oeuvre could be described as a critique of ideology based on the mise en scène of the structures that shape it. Through the expanded fields of art, rock music, cinema, politics and theory his view on social structures leads him to sketch out a map of the totality of production relations. Asier Mendizabal’s transversal, multidisciplinary approach focuses sharply on the difficulties of representation inherent in the political, as well as on the gaps between artistic activity and the “political unconscious” present in cultural productions, manifestations of the collective and mass movements.”
On September 11, 2001 director Dan Oki was living in New York and witnessed the terrorist attack and its consequences firsthand. In this film, he takes his documentary footage from that fateful day and puts it in the context of a feature film. Projections of a film will be held at Zagreb (on September 11), Berlin and New York (on September 12).
A theatre troupe from Croatia travels to New York on September 10, 2001. The troupe is a diverse group
made up of a young married couple and their son, two girls, and a young man. They are welcomed by their
producer, a New Yorker of Croatian descent, whose husband works at the World Trade Centre. Suddenly,
without warning, the troupe finds itself in the middle of the destruction of September 11.
The relationships between the characters come under pressure and begin to change as a reaction to the
sheer force of the events unfolding all around them.
THE PERFORMANCE
78 minute, HD-Cam, 2010
Writer and Director: Dan Oki
Director of Photography: Raul Brzic
Composer: Vjeran Šalamon
Editor: Davor Švaic
With: Vanda Boban, Marin Tudor, Lana Hulenic, Marko Petric, Elena Orlic,
Luka Jokic Sterle, Sandra Sterle, Brian Willems.
Production House: Studio Fugo
Schedule of the projectionZAGREB - Sunday, September 11, 2011, 6 PM
Museum of Contemporary Art
Avenija Dubrovnik 17,
10000 Zagreb, Croatia
BERLIN - Monday 12. September at 8.30 p.m.
BABYLON – Cinema 1
Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30,
10178 BERLIN, Deutschland
http://www.babylonberlin.de/performance.htmNEW YORK – Monday, September 12, 2011, 8PM
THE THING @ WHITE SLAB PALACE
77 Delancey St
(between Allen St & Orchard St)
New York, NY 10002
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
http://post.thing.net/node/3477
Dan Oki (Slobodan Jokic, Zadar, 1965) is an internationaly renown media artist for twenty years.
As a producer, writer and director he made three feature films: Oxygene 4, Performance and the Dark.
He teaches as a Film and Media Arts professor at UMAS in Split and ADU in Zagreb.
MV
Source:
(from the catalogue)
“We are more – act for culture in Europe” is a Europe-wide campaign for the arts and culture. It was launched in October 2010 and will run until 2013, when the EU decides about its next multiannual budget. This campaign wants to show that we are many organisations built up by individuals who value and act for culture in Europe, as it is Media-via editor’s association ‘Culture, Media and Education’ – ARTHEA which is applying a project “Glocal Multimedia Culture”.
“The we are more campaign promotes culture, heritage and the arts, together with education, social cohesion and environmental sustainability, as key areas in which the EU has to make more bold investments if it wants to reach its growth objectives and Europe to remain a thriving democracy in the future.
The campaign aims to influence the negotiations on the next multiannual EU budget beyond 2013 – an opportunity that only comes once every decade! The EU budget will be negotiated over the next two years and we want to make sure that the EU contribution to culture is explicit and with a stronger financial envelope. Read the campaign statement on the European Commission’s budget proposal here (published in July 2011).
The two campaign demands are: A bold and daring Culture Programme for the period 2014-2020 that will fund cutting edge artistic and cultural experimentation around our common European concerns and aspirations. A programme that will support innovative cultural co-operations, and experiment with new artistic, intercultural, social and economic models.”
A three in one postgraduate study: acting, media in which the acting occurs, and culture created by acting was founded at the University of Rijeka by the internationaly famous actor Rade Serbedzija.He also founded the Ulysses Theatre in 2000 in Brijuni, where he directs and acts in most plays.
The postgraduate programme was established on December 14th, 2010 by the Senate of the University of Rijeka as a two-year course for specialising in acting, media and culture field of research. Anyone can enroll into the programme, provided they have a valid university degree and have passed the admissions exam. The programme lasts two years (four semesters) during which theory and practice intertwine through courses such as Voice, Acting, Dramaturgy of Performance, Reading Drama, Characteristics of the Cultural System, Actor as Musician, Philosophy of Arts, Actor and Choreography, Postdrama Theatre.
Main aims are training the students to become critics, theoreticians, scientists that have empirically tested methods and challenges of acting process, as well as interdisciplinarity, interactivity and internationality as the policy of the programme. Part of the courses will be held in English, involving collaborators and professors from foreign leading universities and art schools, such as Nigel Osborne, Reid professor of Music at the Edinburgh University; Staša Zurovac, director and choreographer; Nikola Petković, writer; Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, philosopher; Robin Carr (University of Southern Mississippi) and Deborah Kinghorn (University of New Hampshire), masters of Lessac method for voice and acting; Elvio Baccarini, philosopher; Karpo Godina, film director and DoP, and many others.
The Ark project by Remistudio: Against extreme environmental conditions and climate changes, as well as protection of natural environment from human activities.
“The Ark project was designed on the basis of international experience received from the UIA Work Program “Architecture for Disasters Relief” and according to the concept of a bioclimatic house with independent life support sources. In such buildings provision is made for an independent life support system including elements ensuring a closed functioning cycle.” (…) “The building makes a single energy system. The form of the cupola assists to create an air-eddy at the outer surface around the central bearing, where the wind power generator and tornado generator are placed” (…) “A stressed structure of arches and ropes permits to distribute load along the whole bulk in case of earthquake. The structure of the building permits it to float in case of water leveling up in the World Ocean, to keep afloat and exist autonomously on the surface of the water.”
At The Seasteading Institute, they work to enable seasteading communities – floating cities – which will allow the next generation of pioneers to peacefully test new ideas for government. The most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world.
The Seasteading Institute was founded in 2008 by Patri Friedman, and in December 2010, they have raised over $1,000,000, with funding led by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and first investor in Facebook. Their current focus is on enabling the success of the first seasteads by researching the critical engineering, legal, and business problems, increasing public awareness, and building a core seasteading community.
From June through November famous Newton’s polaroids of mainly erotic fashion photo shoots can be seen in Berlin at his Foundation. For the first time ever, over 300 works based on the original Polaroids offer a comprehensive overview of this aspect of Newton’s oeuvre.The exhibition is thus a look into the sketchbook of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century.
“Helmut Newton used the technology intensively starting in the 1970s, especially for his fashion photo shoots. As he once described in an interview, this satisfied his impatient urge to want to know immediately how a certain situation would look as a photograph. In this context, the Polaroid acted as an idea sketch in addition to testing the actual lighting situation and image composition.”
On Wednesday, 27 July through August, the filming of Goltzius and the Pelican Company by British art film director Peter Greenaway began in Zagreb.The creative part of the crew includes around 60 Croatian members with filmmaker Zoran Sudar as the best Croatian co-production first assistant director with international reputation.
“The story takes place in 1590, at the time when Dutch painter Hendrik Goltzius negotiated in a castle on the Rhine with the rich Alsatian nobleman Margrave to ensure him the funds for a print press. Goltzius wished to print eroticised versions of illustrated Old Testament tales. The nobleman’s castle, enthralled with Goltzius’ seductive tales, drenched in the motifs of incest, adultery, and rape, slowly sinks in the trap of aroused lust, and consequentially in a conflict with religious circles.
The role of Goltzius is played by Dutch actor and poet (the current Dutch Poet Laureate 2009-2012) Ramsey Nasr, and the film also stars American actor F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus, All the President’s Men, Scarface), French actress Kate Moran, Italian actor Pipo Delbono, and Croatian actors and actresses Nada Abrus, Katja Zubčić, Goran Grgić, Enes Vejzović, Duško Valentić, Milan Pleština, Tvrtko Jurić, Vedran Živolić, Samir Vujčić and Goran Bogdan.” The creative part of the crew includes around 60 Croatian members with filmmaker Zoran Sudar (The Last Will ) as the best Croatian co-production first assistant director with international reputation (Anton Chekhov’s The Duel,White Lightnin’, The Hunting Party, The Peacemaker“.
“Peter Greenaway is the author of one of the most exciting film works of today. Film devotees remember him by the extraordinary classic The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover from 1989. Since then he has acquired the cult status thanks to his films The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), The Belly of an Architect (1987), and Drowning by Numbers (1988). His digital analysis of the painting The Wedding at Cana by the mannerist painter Paolo Veronese was screened at the Venice Biennale in 2009. A New York Times critic called it one of “the best art history classes of all times””.
“Thanks to the efforts of several artists, curators and art enthusiasts, the Sarajevo bunker is getting a new lease on life. Since May the bunker has been open to the public for the contemporary art exhibition “No Network: 1st Time Machine Biennial,” a mainly site-specific project exhibiting 44 artists from 17 countries that runs until Sept. 27.
Currently in the Bosnian capital there are no commercial galleries that promote high-end contemporary art and there is no art market per se. There is great hope that things could change when the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art (the name is a partial anagram for Sarajevo) opens in 2014. The original idea for the museum dates back to 1992 when the city was under siege and the plan was to build a collection of contemporary art from across the globe. Since that time, the founders have forged strong relations with several museums across Europe and have received donations of pieces from artists like Marina Abramovich, Anish Kapoor and Joseph Beuys.
At the moment the collection is housed in a temporary space and is opened up only by appointment but it is hoped that construction on a building designed by Renzo Piano will begin in earnest next year.”
Manchester International Festival and Teatro Real Madrid present on 30th June-17th July the world premiere of a startling new piece for the stage: The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, a biography of the godmother of performance art, re-imagined by visionary director Robert Wilson.
“What an incredible evening, truly the finest theatre I have ever seen. Abramović was incredible, moving through the play, of which she is the central character in the most profound way, with a light touch, never overpowering her cast. Willem Defoe cut an imposing but insightful figure throughout, playing a role as narrator, but so much more, becoming a representation of a massively significant part of Abramović herself. I cannot speak highly enough of his performance; I was more than impressed, frankly stunned at his abilities as an actor, playing the dark side of a human soul, but again more, becoming the gatekeeper of Abramović’s mind, whilst maintaining a merciless and cutting humour that displayed an absence of pretension in both Abramović and himself. His representation of the internal torture present within a profound, intelligent mind was one which rose above an occasion already described quite rightly, as a significant moment in the history of Mancunian theatrical culture.” (Comment by Daniel James Gillard)
The concert premiere of Bjork’s (45) “Biophilia” on 30th June, was commissioned for opening night and five additional performances by the Manchester International Festival in England which continues through July 17.
“Biophilia” (audio for iPad) welcomes the interactivity of the Internet and harnesses the power and flexibility of devices that incorporate video, audio and user control far beyond the play button. As media artist and Biophilia developer Scott Snibbe said: “Bjork had a complete, unified concept where everything was interconnected. The music wasn’t dominant, the image wasn’t dominant, the interactivity wasn’t dominant. Everything worked together the way a movie or an opera does.”
“Biophilia” has songs about crystals, dark matter and the origins of the universe. In performance, each new song was introduced by the orotund recorded voice of David Attenborough, giving the song’s title, scientific phenomenon and musical lesson: “ ‘Hollow,’ DNA, rhythm.”
Motovun Film Festival runs from July 25 to July 29 for the 13th consecutive year offering some of the best cinema productions from around the world. This year the festival premiers a film by Wim Wenders dedicated to Pina Bausch.
Motovun Film Festival is entirely dedicated to films made in small cinematographies and independent productions, films that broke out through their innovation, ideas, and the power of their stories. In everything, except for the ambition and the quality, Motovun wants to be a small festival showing small films, small in the warmest sense od the word.
Motovun Film Festival is a five-day film marathon in which film screenings alternate from 10 a.m. until 4 a.m., with evening outdoor screenings and daily screenings in theatres. Festival program consists of around 70 titles from all over the world, from documentaries to feature films, from shorts to long forms, from guerilla made films to co productions. The only criteria in their selection is that they fit in the open-minded atmosphere of the festival with their innovations. This year the festival is being held for the twelwth time.
Monty Python members, mostly philosophers, have reunited to voice a 3D animated film based on the memoirs of the late Graham Chapman. The crew is famous for the cult TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus (UK, 1969) and the team also brought films including Holy Grail and Life of Brian to the big screen.
A Liar’s Autobiography will feature recordings that Chapman, who died in 1989 aged 48, made of his 1980 book. John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones have all signed up while Eric Idle is not involved. The film is due out in spring next year.
The second international part of CAGE100 takes place in 50 citites in more than 20 countries. In the Carillon project, CAGE100 sets its sights on a special instrument: church bells, also known as Carillon. The instruments are truly magnificent and monumental – the largest bell can weigh up to 18.5 tons. They will be played worldwide to celebrate John Cage on the occasion of his 100th birthday. (Diest, Belgium, 28 July, 2013, church Sint – Sulpitiuskerk)
Carillons are usually found in the tops of towers, old town halls, and churches. Cage’s pieces were especially composed for these instruments and, since they are usually so prominently located, the music will ring all throughout the cities in which the pieces are played.
Ars Electronica festival will be held in Linz from 31 August – 6 September.
“The insatiable hunger for knowledge; the burning passion to blaze new trails and overturn old points of view; the wish to find out where we come from; the longing to endow our existence with meaning and to establish our place in a comprehensive model of the universe. The satisfaction we derive upon getting to the bottom of these things, explaining them, describing them, expressing them. These absolutely quintessential elements of what it means to be human constitute the shared source of art and science. They are the driving forces from which innovation emerges”, say Christine Schöpf and Gerfried Stocker (Artistic Directors of the Ars Electronica Festival).
The directors add: “In cooperation with CERN, an institution in which more than 8,000 scientists from many countries are at work expanding the boundaries of our knowledge of the laws of nature in an effort to understand the genesis of the universe and the origins of all matter, we are dedicating the 2011 Ars Electronica Festival to the fascinating world of leading-edge research on the basic principles of the cosmos.”
Dr W.J.T. Mitchell from the University of Chicago, was a key-note speaker at the event Visual Studies Today – The Power of Images, which was organized by the Center for Visual Studies, Zagreb from 7th to 8th November 2013, as well as at the conference Visual Studies as Academic Discipline . Dr Mitchell is the most famous authority of visual studies in the world. (Schedule) Dr Mitchell’s talk was titled “Seeing Madness: Insanity, Media, and Visual Culture” and it raised two questions:”1) Is it possible to “see madness” or to represent it visually with any kind of certainty? 2) What motivates the desire to see madness, to put it on stage, or to capture its variable manifestations in visual images?” Examples were drawn mainly from photography, operatic spectacle, and cinema.
NGO “Culture, Media and Education” president and Media-Via editor Dr Vesna Srnic attended the lecture and because of the lack of time asked Dr Mitchell a question in writing, that he will possibly answer.
This is a question of Dr Srnic:
“In Critical Inquiry, in 1991st, you interviewed famous American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger. When you elaborated the relation between Image and Word, as well as about Gender and Embodiment, you provoked Barbara Kruger with this /quotation:
„You can go back to the Old Testament to find sentiments like “a silent woman is the gift of God.”
and KRUGER said: Oh, let me write that down.“ /unquote (Critical Inquiry, 1991, p. 445)
I think this is a very interesting moment in that interview, because of several possible interpretations: on charismatic, feminist, Leftist level Kruger was understandably surprised, although she should have known the point of that religious view, and did not mock; another Rightist level is well known for its meaning as the mystical power of silence.
What I would like to ask you is if you can see the theses of the third meaning in the phenomenology of Time and Space as Here and Now, in the performative middle way, thus artistically rejecting Gender differentiation, rejecting Images and Words completely, as well as Leftist and Rightist positions and oppositions?
Is this „spinning wildly or standing still“ significant Spiritual Embodiment for you and can be seen as, although marginal, the rejection of the Madness?”
On November 1st, Laurie Anderson was honored at Legends 2011, a Pratt Institute scholarship benefit honoring icons of art and design. The Legends Awards were conceived in 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the Pratt Institute to celebrate distinguished individuals and corporations in the world of art and design, whose accomplishments and values resonate with those of Pratt Institute.
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