Biologists have various kinds of microscopes, Chemists have various kinds of Spectrometers, Physicists and Mathematicians have Telescopes and Computers, Artists have their Brushes, Musicians have the Piano. Whatever music piece has an instrument operated with keys (piano, celesta, clavichord, harpsichord, organ, keyboard etc) simply cannot ever be dissonant, because the instrument combined with the artists talent can create feelings and happiness.
Smithson was the Iggy Pop-like founding father of land art, best known for Spiral Jetty, a monumental earthwork in Utah made from 6500 tons of basalt, earth and salt.
Forty years ago today, the artist took a No. 30 bus out of Port Authority bound for Passaic, New Jersey, equipped with a Kodak Instamatic and science-fiction novel.
On arrival, he went on an exploratory tour of dead industrial areas, took photographs and wrote his observations and comments down in a parody of a travel journal that’s published here.
In his journal, Smithson brilliantly captured the meta-life of cities and how some places seem to express and represent a much larger, almost mythic psychological story.
Here’s one of the artist’s observations:
Passaic does seem full of “holes” compared to New York City, which seems tightly packed and solid….those holes in a sense are the monumental values that define, without trying, the memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures.
Brucennial 2012. a giant, rambunctious community of artists. the show is a celebration of people as much as an exhibition.
Eternal Sunshine, The Minsheng Museum of Art, Shanghai, 2011-2012
In Eternal Sunshine Marc Lafia presents a series of works that reflects network culture’s restructuring of the subject in contemporary society. In network culture mankind’s relationship to media has changed from one of representation to presentation; and from contemplation to embodiment. In the main space of the exhibition, the artist has transformed the virtual domain of online social networks, e.g. facebook, twitter, weibo, etc. into a large scale, interactive installation. This vivacious work involving video, sculptures, and audience participation brings together a number of techno-social concerns that have been central to Lafia’s long career as artist, filmmaker and information architect. In particular his interest in how we are all part of an elaborate program that is as real as it is virtual. Presented along with this installation, specially designed for the Minsheng Art Museum, are Lafia’s print and video works that investigate how subjectivities, once constructed through nation states and cinematic representation have changed over time to become a global condition in which the individual now represents him/herself through social media in the network.
Eternal Sunshine, 2011
Installation, swimming pool, lounge chairs, karaoke lounge, blackboard, ping pong table, drums, guitar, selected reading materials
