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LMCC's Swing Space at 32 Avenue of the Americas was home to the artists in Art Star - a reality show of artists competing to get gallery representation at Deitch Projects. Granted, it's a little perverse this show concept, but you can see a preview of the show at the Museum of the Moving Image on May 12th at 8PM. Check it out so your eye-rolling can be well informed.
Speed Limit-esque curatorial plan in England:
ARTISTS, THE SAATCHI GALLERY WANTS YOU!
The Saatchi Gallery in London is undertaking an ambitious plan to showcase works by "all artists" on its website at www.saatch-gallery.co.uk. Dubbed "Your Gallery," the scheme is still in the preparation stage, but artists are invited to send jpgs of their work as well as biographical and exhibition information to kieran@saatchigallery.com. (We dashed off a query a few days ago, but have not yet heard back -- maybe Kieran is busy!) The ever-growing website already has a daily online magazine with a London gallery listing, a section of reader-contributed essays and a "forums" area devoted to online debates over things like "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" and "what is bad taste in art?"
More excitment at LMCC: Open Studios Weekend. We have two artist residencies - our flagship, Workspace. And the Gulf Coast Residency which provided space for displaced Gulf Coast artists. Hot stuff at both so you should come check them out April 28-30. Click here for more info.
Come on down to Lower Manhattan Cultural Council tonight! Speed Limit is having a reception.
Seth and I had a brief colloquy about Speed Limit the last two days. Here it is.
Both of us are eager for comment on the show ("experiment") as it stands, and as it might still be. And I'm interested in the question of comment more generally, why it's difficult for us to talk ideas and criticism, whether a blog is a place where this might happen.
I know that some people have had the sense that this blog has been a boys' indulgence, something the wise would avoid, that it's about posture and ridicule rather than comfortable debate and real curiosity. And a few others (outsiders) have said that the idea of an honest corporate blog is a contradiction, that there is no way to encourage debate, humor, irreverence and still protect the ethos of order and at least nominal hierarchy necessary for an organization to work. I don't believe that, or maybe I'm not that interested in the safety of hierarchy. Or maybe I'm just deluded and a bit hypocritical being the boss.
Whatever. I just thought other people might want to talk about redhead, about Speed Limit, about what it means to curate experiments, what it means to succeed or fail.
Tom
On Apr 9, 2006, at 10:31 PM, Tom Healy wrote:
Seth,
Now that you have had sex [reference to reported past event] and thought about thinking about Beckett, we must talk about the Speed Limit never approached - and how, at least, to steer things into an interesting, muddy ditch.
The show is pretty terrible - and not in a good way. Not even in a really bad way. It's just bad in a desultory way.
What can be done to rescue this? Or should we just keep the lights off?
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On Apr 10, 2006, at 12:36 PM, Seth Cameron wrote:
There are two kinds of shows: shows where the work matters, and shows where the show matters.
This, like Knock, is an example of the latter - the work in Knock wasn't very good either, but we got good press so you were happy.
This show has had no press, and I've been wondering about that, sadly for you - on the philosophical rather than practical level.
But this would actually be the ditch to dig, I believe. The question of feminism in the arts is no longer one for the Guerrilla Girls. The 'raising awareness' phase is over. And it is time for people to look at into some deeper graves if they want to fix the problem. The first problem is the overwhelming tendency for people to treat women as a minority. My attempt at anti-ghettoization was to allow men to participate. Some have, very few.
What we have on the walls is the ugliness of democracy combined with the ugliness of the minority rights rally. I'm open to ideas on how to make those things less reprehensible.
But I think most people see the show for its oddity. It is weird looking. It isn't a crappy community art project, and it isn't a pretty gallery. It's something else. Bad taste, certainly. But almost in the realm of a Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not.
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On Apr 11, 2006, at 9:14 AM, Tom Healy wrote:
Philosophical investigations are underway about the press and its pull on my self-identity.
But my concerns with "Speed Limit" are, if not fully independent, certainly additional. Good or bad press would simply divert from my disappointment. And, yes, whether it's "di","a","ad" or "animad", as long as some "vert" is going on, some turning, I'm closer to being happy. (See my earlier comment about driving into a ditch.)
My problem is that I see no movement of any kind, nothing turning up, except what the cat has dragged in. And all that's dead.
The show is on ho-hum autopilot. It's bad because it's inert. Forget about the press. Who's making any claim for it anywhere? Even the artists aren't: their work, such as it is, just comes in and gets put up. You don't even fight with it.
Your email above is as close as you've come to saying or doing anything about the show.
And, love, let's not congratulate ourselves. Would that there be anything like the ugliness of democracy or a minority rights rally in that little room!
It's simply the dangerous, lazy cheapness of language that even allows you to say that. (Something, because you're smart, to which you're far, far too susceptible. A good thing to get over.) If you ever deserved a child's beating, it would be for that: just stringing out words that you know aren't even a lie because you didn't care if anyone believed them or not.)
Want to see democracy or a minority rights rally? Want to see ugly people with very little purchase on language? You should have been at City Hall park yesterday with the thousands of hotel maids protesting our immigration policy. That was art. That was our show.
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On Apr 11, 2006, at 10:57 AM, Seth Cameron wrote:
tell me more about fighting with it...
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On April 11, 2006 at 11pm, Tom writes:
I'm not sure how the show needs to be fought with. I think it needs something late Medieval: commentary. The interesting thing about the word "commentary" is that its literal Latin meaning is "something invented" - from the idea that something remembered and related is something made up. So make it up. Tell some stories about the works in the show. May labels. And do them the way the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA does them: some should be "true", some should be blatantly false, some should lead down dead ends of uncertainty. You could create stories of influence and linkage that no one will know whether to believe or not.
Margarita isn't the word I thought of when I saw this photo. I thought of scarf. Two definitions.
The lovely Ms. Levin is perfectly cast to illustrate the first:
(n) a garment worn around the head or neck or shoulders for warmth or decoration. (See also M. Vevle)
And Perrence for some reason has come public demonstrating the second:
(v) to masturbate while strangling oneself. (See also S. Cameron)
Here is a shot of one of our typical Friday afternoon Happy Hours in the office.
Rob, although disgusted by the "girliness" of his margarita, forces himself to hold his breath and drink it down.
Melissa, who has been studying improv for years, pantomimes eating a handful of imaginary sunflower seeds and spitting the shells on our nice new carpet.
And Perry does us the courtesy of covering his hideous disfigurement, elephantitis of the opinion.
