My friend the future's not what it used to be
The survival of memory depends on speaking
Of trees jettisoned to space bunnies spills
In our prematurely dug graves not without futuristic
Corporate logos almost don't see the difference
Between sci fi and real life what with the people all "busy"
On Facebook over-connected not conjuncted
Is that how you would put it? Or is my luddite
Streak just sour grapes (space junk?) I want our
Present to be sweeter (more scrappy?) so soak
In the virtul past the ones we can't seem to be
Bring it up on this fantasy screen from you to me
Return from it like we were having a moment.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Mini Tour in July
In July I will be reading and presenting in LA, San Francisco, Oakland, and Boston at the following events:
LA
Poetic Research Bureau
July 11th, 4:30PM
w/ Steven Farmer
hosted by Joseph Mosconi
San Francisco
Commons and Art Practice (a discussion with Nonsite Collective)
Nicole Hollis Studios
935 Natoma St. SF
July 18th, 2PM
hosted by Michael Cross and Nonsite Collective
Oakland
The (New) Reading Series @ 21 Grand
July 18th
w/ Catherine Meng
hosted by Alli Warren, Michael Nicoloff, & Erika Staiti
Cambridge
A Boston Poet Tea Party poetry marathon
Pierre Menard Gallery
July 30th, 7PM
hosted by Jim Behrle, Michael Carr, David Kirschenbaum, John Mulrooney, and Aaron Tieger
LA
Poetic Research Bureau
July 11th, 4:30PM
w/ Steven Farmer
hosted by Joseph Mosconi
San Francisco
Commons and Art Practice (a discussion with Nonsite Collective)
Nicole Hollis Studios
935 Natoma St. SF
July 18th, 2PM
hosted by Michael Cross and Nonsite Collective
Oakland
The (New) Reading Series @ 21 Grand
July 18th
w/ Catherine Meng
hosted by Alli Warren, Michael Nicoloff, & Erika Staiti
Cambridge
A Boston Poet Tea Party poetry marathon
Pierre Menard Gallery
July 30th, 7PM
hosted by Jim Behrle, Michael Carr, David Kirschenbaum, John Mulrooney, and Aaron Tieger
Monday, June 14, 2010
Art, Criticism, and Its Markets (@ 16 Beaver)
Wednesday 06.16.10 -- Art, Criticism, and Its Markets
CONTENTS:
1. About this Wednesday
2. More on Isabelle Graw
3. Readings
4. Upcoming Readings
___________________________________________________
1. About this Wednesday
What: Reading Discussion
Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: Wednesday 06.16.10 at 7:15 pm
Who: Free and open to all
Over the last 20 or 30 years, there has been an increasing amount of criticism written which is directed at the economy or market of art. This growing interest on the part of critics has mirrored the burgeoning market around art. And even today, in the midst of a financial depression in many parts of the world, art is increasingly seen as an integral part of 'investment portfolios' and considered a 'safe haven' for nervous investors. Even 'well intentioned' efforts which attempt to protect the interests of artists, through funds or pension trusts, only seem to reinforce the ever increasing pace of the financialization or
securitization of art.
This Wednesday, we would like to invite those who might be interested in exploring the interrelations between art, money, and criticism to attend what will be the first meeting of a focused reading group on the subject.
The reading group is being organized by Anastasiya Osipova and Zac Dempster and they will use Isabelle Graw's book "High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture" as a point of reference and departure.
The book investigates what an art market does in relation to the artists who strategize within it. Graw begins by narrating through Gustave Courbert's exploits in prison and his heroic exclusion from Salon de Paris into collectors homes. Could this serve as precedent for contemporary artist in their criticisms of the institution while fortifying their cultural value? Some contemporary cases are those of the New York American Fine Arts, Co gallery, Andrea Fraser and Merlin Carpenter, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Julien Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Yves Klein…
Among key questions that will be addressed through these discussions is a position of criticism vis-à-vis art, which is already seen as both an epistemological object and an indexical expression of market value (not unlike money). Does this status of art reify critical texts as well?
If the so-called art-market is not to be described as a reservoir of phantasms, if the story we could tell of it is not to be a ghost mystery story, what genre would be appropriate?
It is our hope to meet the limitations of this self-reflexive text by an exegesis that will include artist press releases, gallery websites, Facebook pages, photographs, blog posts, art magazine and journal reviews, art auction details, etc. As though following on Twitter the question "to what degree can contemporary writers profit off the vocabulary this text offers? In what fields and by the use of what empty signifiers?"
Anastasiya and Zac will begin the evening by introducing how they arrived at the idea for this reading group, and then we will begin what will be the first of several sessions of readings and discussions.
___________________________________________________
2. More on Isabelle Graw
Isabelle Graw is Professor for Art Theory and Art History at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism.
She is an art critic and co-founder of Texte zur Kunst in Berlin -- Sternberg Press's website. Graw now lives in Berlin, but was associated with a Cologne group of artists that circled around Martin Kippenberger.
___________________________________________________
3. Readings
For the introductory meeting we will look at the following texts:
Isabelle Graw, foreword to High Price
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/graw_innen_pt1.pdf
Michel Foucault “What is Critique?”
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/foucault_what_is_critique.pdf
Dietrich Dietrichson “On (Surplus) Value in Art”
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/dietrichson.pdf
Barbara Rose "The Auction is the Action"
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/rose_auction.pdf
and view a promotional video from Artprice, a French company that
serves as the largest database of the art sales records.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCyKRTX5bdg
___________________________________________________
4. Upcoming Readings
2nd meeting reading list:
Isabelle Graw, Chapter One of High Price
Jean-Joseph Goux “Figurative Standards: Gold and the Phallus” from
Symbolic Economies
Georges Bataille & numismatics (abstracts from Denis Hollier Against
Architecture: Writings of Georges Bataille)
“Art and its markets: a roundtable discussion” , Artforum, April 2008
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_46/ai_n31487375/
Seth Price “Dispersion”
http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf
Pierre Bourdieu, abstracts from The Rules of Art.
“The History of Money” videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0IJCGuNtqk
(possibly: Georg Simmel The Philosophy of Money)
CONTENTS:
1. About this Wednesday
2. More on Isabelle Graw
3. Readings
4. Upcoming Readings
___________________________________________________
1. About this Wednesday
What: Reading Discussion
Where: 16Beaver Street, 4th Floor
When: Wednesday 06.16.10 at 7:15 pm
Who: Free and open to all
Over the last 20 or 30 years, there has been an increasing amount of criticism written which is directed at the economy or market of art. This growing interest on the part of critics has mirrored the burgeoning market around art. And even today, in the midst of a financial depression in many parts of the world, art is increasingly seen as an integral part of 'investment portfolios' and considered a 'safe haven' for nervous investors. Even 'well intentioned' efforts which attempt to protect the interests of artists, through funds or pension trusts, only seem to reinforce the ever increasing pace of the financialization or
securitization of art.
This Wednesday, we would like to invite those who might be interested in exploring the interrelations between art, money, and criticism to attend what will be the first meeting of a focused reading group on the subject.
The reading group is being organized by Anastasiya Osipova and Zac Dempster and they will use Isabelle Graw's book "High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture" as a point of reference and departure.
The book investigates what an art market does in relation to the artists who strategize within it. Graw begins by narrating through Gustave Courbert's exploits in prison and his heroic exclusion from Salon de Paris into collectors homes. Could this serve as precedent for contemporary artist in their criticisms of the institution while fortifying their cultural value? Some contemporary cases are those of the New York American Fine Arts, Co gallery, Andrea Fraser and Merlin Carpenter, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Julien Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Yves Klein…
Among key questions that will be addressed through these discussions is a position of criticism vis-à-vis art, which is already seen as both an epistemological object and an indexical expression of market value (not unlike money). Does this status of art reify critical texts as well?
If the so-called art-market is not to be described as a reservoir of phantasms, if the story we could tell of it is not to be a ghost mystery story, what genre would be appropriate?
It is our hope to meet the limitations of this self-reflexive text by an exegesis that will include artist press releases, gallery websites, Facebook pages, photographs, blog posts, art magazine and journal reviews, art auction details, etc. As though following on Twitter the question "to what degree can contemporary writers profit off the vocabulary this text offers? In what fields and by the use of what empty signifiers?"
Anastasiya and Zac will begin the evening by introducing how they arrived at the idea for this reading group, and then we will begin what will be the first of several sessions of readings and discussions.
___________________________________________________
2. More on Isabelle Graw
Isabelle Graw is Professor for Art Theory and Art History at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism.
She is an art critic and co-founder of Texte zur Kunst in Berlin -- Sternberg Press's website. Graw now lives in Berlin, but was associated with a Cologne group of artists that circled around Martin Kippenberger.
___________________________________________________
3. Readings
For the introductory meeting we will look at the following texts:
Isabelle Graw, foreword to High Price
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/graw_innen_pt1.pdf
Michel Foucault “What is Critique?”
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/foucault_what_is_critique.pdf
Dietrich Dietrichson “On (Surplus) Value in Art”
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/dietrichson.pdf
Barbara Rose "The Auction is the Action"
http://sduk.us/beaver/PDF/rose_auction.pdf
and view a promotional video from Artprice, a French company that
serves as the largest database of the art sales records.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCyKRTX5bdg
___________________________________________________
4. Upcoming Readings
2nd meeting reading list:
Isabelle Graw, Chapter One of High Price
Jean-Joseph Goux “Figurative Standards: Gold and the Phallus” from
Symbolic Economies
Georges Bataille & numismatics (abstracts from Denis Hollier Against
Architecture: Writings of Georges Bataille)
“Art and its markets: a roundtable discussion” , Artforum, April 2008
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_46/ai_n31487375/
Seth Price “Dispersion”
http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf
Pierre Bourdieu, abstracts from The Rules of Art.
“The History of Money” videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0IJCGuNtqk
(possibly: Georg Simmel The Philosophy of Money)
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Cornered (Black Light)
What it would take
To name ourselves
Into unblind threat
To maintain this threat
And through it call
‘Self’ into being
Black light, black light
Of the light-skinned
Face cornered
In the room any
Place by your camera
Any name by the name
We would assume
How it would
Accuse an angle
And without alibi
Unworld.
To name ourselves
Into unblind threat
To maintain this threat
And through it call
‘Self’ into being
Black light, black light
Of the light-skinned
Face cornered
In the room any
Place by your camera
Any name by the name
We would assume
How it would
Accuse an angle
And without alibi
Unworld.
