June 2008
13 posts
THIS WEEK IN PRIVACY: Beware of the Donkey
Moments ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would grant legal immunity to the telecom companies who helped the Bush administration tap Americans’ telephones after 9/11. The bill marks a major victory for the telecoms lobby, and a major defeat for people with telephones. [via Guardian]
On Wednesday, an ‘Survival Guide’ for interns working for Congressman Don...
NEW YORK - TWO DAYS LEFT
The New Normal finishes this Saturday, 21 June at Artists Space (38 Greene St. in New York). You can still catch it between 12pm abd 6pm Friday, and 12pm to 5pm Saturday.
The exhibition tour continues at Centro Huarte in Spain beginning July 4.
PROJECT FILE: 'How Little We Know of Our...
How Little We Know of Our Neighbors Rebecca Baron, 2005 Single-channel video with sound Rebecca Baron’s film explores the history of the Mass Observation Movement, focusing in particular on the role of photographer Humphrey Spender. Working in the late 1930s, Spender photographed people in public places. He preferred to catch his subjects unawares, often making use of hidden cameras,...
PROJECT FILE: 'Britain by Mass Observation'
Britain by Mass Observation Penguin Books, 1939
In 1937, the poet Charles Madge teamed up with filmmaker Humphrey Jennings and anthropologist Tom Harrison to found Mass Observation, a movement dedicated to studying the everyday lives of British people. Their study included field research in settings like pubs, conducted by paid observers who would record behavior such as the cigarette and beer...
PROJECT FILE: 'Proof' by Brad Troemel
Proof Brad Troemel
Artist/digital native Brad Troemel has edited together a series of video clips of girls reciting their MySpace ID numbers. According to Troemel, these users are reciting their numbers on camera in order to prove that their profiles are authentic. Apparently, it’s common practice to steal videos and photos from a popular MySpace profile, and use them to create a fake...
PROJECT FILE: 'Exposure' by Marie Sester
Exposure Marie Sester, 2001 Three-channel HD video projection
The series of still images presented in Exposure offer a glimpse into the innards of large-scale objects, rendering them transparent. The piece makes use of X-ray images of trucks, such as those used at border crossings, which reveal their inner workings and their cargo. Presented at monumental scale, these images are intercut with...
PROJECT FILE: 'Sic, Notes from a keylogger' by...
Sic, Notes from a keylogger Lance Wakeling, 2006/2007
Sic is a visual record kept by a program called a keylogger that artist Lance Wakeling has installed on his computer. It records every key pressed, including errors and deletions, when the artist is writing what appear to be emails. The artist says this information is “best kept private, but the range of information is so great and...
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
An exhibition checklist for the show can now be seen on our Flickr page.
More photos from Artists Space coming soon.
THIS WEEK IN PRIVACY: Twittering Congressmen,...
Rep. John Culberson (R - Texas) made news for his Twitter feed. He began posting on the micro-blogging site in late May with the post ‘I just learned how to Twitter!’ and hasn’t looked back since. Now, he’s gotten into a public flame war with fellow Twitterer Tim Ryan (D - Ohio) about oil policy. [via Sunlight Foundation]
Meanwhile, a busy Facebook user created ten...
ARTSLANT REVIEW
I found this nice write-up about the show thanks to Google Blog Alerts. (What did we ever do without them?) Here’s a quote:
“What becomes evident throughout The New Normal is that for a number of political, technological, and social reasons, the boundaries between the private and the public - whether it be our bodies, our identities, or the spaces in which we occupy, are rapidly...
NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW
Today’s New York Times has a review of the show by Karen Rosenberg, who does not like cats.
REVIEW - WE MAKE MONEY NOT ART
Régine Debatty has written an excellent review of The New Normal at We Make Money Not Art. Here’s the link.
May 2008
19 posts
3 tags
THIS WEEK IN PRIVACY: Unlucky CCTV cameras,...
Pelham, New York resident Jared Crystal was nearly hit by a falling tree as punishment for reading the George Orwell book 1984, or so this reporter from Fox news seems to believe: The Guardian reports that Nottingham University Masters student Rizwaan Sabir, 22, who researches terrorist tactics, was held for six days after police learned that he had downloaded al-Qaida related material from the...
THIS WEEK IN PRIVACY: Big Brother, Emily Gould,...
Big Brother was in the news this week as politicians in the UK considered plans for a database that would log every single phone call and email. The announcement came nearly six months to the day after UK ministers apologized for losing another database containing the personal data of 25 million children. Meanwhile, reality TV earned second place in a list of the worst inventions of all time in a...
TREVOR PAGLEN - BLANK SPOTS ON A MAP
A video of Trevor Paglen’s talk at the Influencers Conference has been posted online. Check it out.
What Are We Twittering? →
NEW NORMAL PANEL DISCUSSION
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 - 8:00p.m. Public Program at Artists Space co-organized by iCI and Artists Space Please join us for a panel discussion focusing on works of art and themes addressed in the exhibition, The New Normal. The participants will include exhibition curator Michael Connor, artists Jill Magid, and Jennifer and Kevin McCoy. The panel will be moderated by Benjamin Weil, director...
PROJECT FILE: ARTWORK IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS
Micro-blogging site Twitter, which restricts users to very short posts (called ‘tweets’) to encourage frequent, on-the-go updates, has been in the news for its role in enabling discussion and reporting about the Chinese earthquake. Today, the Guardian blogs about how people affected by the quake are posting memorial tweets online. On Friday, Rhizome ran a piece by Ed Halter rounding up...
INSTALLATION PHOTOS NOW ONLINE
Installation view of (L to R): Jill Magid, Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy, Sophie Calle, Unfinished, Thomson & Craighead, Beacon. More at our Flickr page.
THIS WEEK IN PRIVACY
Google, who have an army of camera-laden cars photographing every street in the US, announced that it will begin to blur the faces of bystanders who are accidentally photographed. And not a moment to soon. Gawker has a roundup of strange things caught on camera by the Google Mapmakers, the latest being a young woman who reacted very quickly when she saw the Google Maps car coming down the...
Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon... →
CLAY SHIRKY ON COLBERT
After posting about Hasan Elahi’s recent appearance on the Colbert Report, I realized that Clay Shirky (who wrote a great essay for the exhibition catalogue) was also on the show last month. This means that three people involved with The New Normal have now been on The Colbert Report in the past six weeks. First Paglen, then Elahi, and now this. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a clear-cut...
Art Fag City » Artist Hasan Elahi on The Colbert... →
RHIZOME REVIEW
Rhizome just published a review of The New Normal written by Tyler Coburn, who says: “Connor argues that the power entailed in this type of public disclosure can be harnessed in the service of new forms of cultural production and new “tactics for political critique.” He also gives Sharif Waked props: “While playful in conception, Chic Point, as with many of the works in...
ELAHI ON COLBERT - VIDEO CLIP
HASAN ELAHI - TRACKING TRANSIENCE
I got an email from Hasan Elahi earlier today saying he was on the Colbert Report tonight discussing his project Tracking Transience and how do deal with being on a terrorist watchlist. In 2002, Elahi came under investigation by the F.B.I. after an anonymous tipster identified him as a possible terrorist. This experience was the inspiration for an ongoing project that is part artwork and part...
PRIVACY AND TECHNOLOGY: LOOKING BACK
Yesterday I posted a quote taken from a Sherlock Holmes story that reflected a fascination with the private sphere. The story, first published in 1891, implied a link between the themes of the story and the new technology of the typewriter. One of the ideas behind The New Normal is that recent technological changes are forcing us to re-negotiate the boundaries between public and private. This...
A CASE OF IDENTITY
‘My dear fellow,’ said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, ‘life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the...
CHENEY'S ORIGINAL QUOTE
The exhibition The New Normal drew its title from the following quote, taken from a speech made by Dick Cheney in October of 2001: “Homeland security is not a temporary measure just to meet one crisis. Many of the steps we have now been forced to take will become permanent in American life. They represent an understanding of the world as it is, and dangers we must guard against perhaps for...
NEW YORK: TREVOR PAGLEN TALK, 9 MAY
On 9 May, Rhizome will present a talk by geographer and artist Trevor Paglen at the New Museum, and it should be well worth checking out. Paglen, whose work Six C.I.A. Agents Wanted in Connection with the Abduction of Abu Omar from Milan, Italy is included in The New Normal, may be familiar to some from his recent appearance on the Colbert Report: The appearance was in support of his new book,...
LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE
For the project Learning to Love You More, artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher publish an ongoing series of artistic ‘assignments’. They invite members of the public to complete these assignments and send in reports of their work, which are displayed on the website as well as in books, exhibitions, and other contexts. The project now includes 68 assignments, most of which have...
April 2008
4 posts
SOMETHING TO HIDE - MAY 1 AT JOE'S PUB
The ACLU has organized an event this Thursday featuring readings by artists and writers discussing the threat that government surveillance poses to artistic freedom. Artist Hasan Elahi, who is showing two works in The New Normal, will be taking part. Too bad I’m off to Australia tonight…
SNAPS
A few snapshots of the exhibition and preview, taken by Mirelle from Artists Space, are now available at our Flickr page. Sadly, Mr. Cheney was not in attendance.
OPENING TONIGHT
The New Normal opens tonight at Artists Space, 38 Greene St., 3rd Floor, from 6PM to 8PM. The work is on the wall, the drinks are on ice. No word yet on Mr. Cheney’s possible appearance, but we are a top pick on both Flavorpill and on Artcards - don’t miss it!
SENT TO DICK CHENEY'S OFFICE
Dear Mr. Cheney, I’m writing to invite you to a special event that will take place in New York on Friday, April 25 from 6PM to 8PM. The event is the opening of an exhibition called The New Normal, which explores the theme of privacy through 13 recent artworks. As the curator of the exhibition, I owe you a great debt for providing us with this title. In October of 2001, you gave a speech in...