A human project

Feb. 1, 2013 at 7:50am with 10 notes

By Bree Richards

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7:33am

The Toxicity of Smugness | Melbourne Review

7:24am

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Not just in America but across liberal democratic societies, there is today a sense that all political subjects grope amid shared symbols for the lost purpose and unity of our communities. This search is a doomed quest: our political community can never be as smooth or consistent as it appears in our myths and ideologies. Nevertheless, commemorative events come around again — and so we try, again. Although we may not believe in ghost stories, we nevertheless gather in commemorations to “body forth” a haunted presence. This gathering stirs intimations of the past in the present, a revenant memory.

— Ben Gook, 9/11: The value of memory

Jan. 29, 2013 at 9:15pm

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The Internet is perhaps the closest thing we’ll ever have to the ring of Gyges—the invisibility charm that allows its wearer to be alone while having access to the outside world—which Plato posited as the truest test of how a person will act when freed from accountability or restraint. We might not be doing anything evil, but we’re not doing anything we want the world to see.

— A Fake Facebook wedding : The New Yorker

Jan. 26, 2013 at 10:32pm

(via ‘Racism’ of early colour photography explored in art exhibition | Art and design | guardian.co.uk)

10:29pm

(via Poor Monuments : ADAM BROOMBERG & OLIVER CHANARIN)

Jan. 24, 2013 at 8:02am

Bas Jan Ader, All my clothes, 1970 (via Bas Jan Ader at Villa delle Rose | e-flux)

6:20am

(via Beyonce Lip-Synch Scandal: Why We Care : The New Yorker)

Jan. 23, 2013 at 10:52am

Mark Wallinger, Royal Ascot, 1994

(via British Council − Art Collection − Collection)

Jan. 17, 2013 at 10:07pm

(via PAPERMAG: Krzysztof Wodiczko’s “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” Opens Tonight in Union Square)

9:46pm

Francis Alÿs, Zocalo, Mexico City, 22 May 1999

Jan. 16, 2013 at 2:54am

Arnolfini | Version Control

How do we relate to the world through images and objects? How is our vision of the past and the future affected, or transformed, by the contemporary information economy?

Version Control is a large-scale survey exhibition about the notion of appropriation and performance in the expanded field of contemporary artistic practice. Instead of an understanding of performance as a live activity or connected to an exploration of the artist’s body, the exhibition explores performance in a radical sense as a method of making the past present. Performativity, in this way, explores the conscious moment of staging, appropriating, archiving and re-visiting images and other forms of representation, touching on questions of historiography, mediation, subjectivity, and ownership. (via Arnolfini | Version Control)

12:57am

To conclude our research in Berlin at ZK/U, Catherine Ryan and I are unveiling the Site Dedicated to the Active Effacement and Complete Disregard of History on 24 January. More information on our research blog: thefuturesofthepast.wordpress.com

Jan. 15, 2013 at 10:27am

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Take “Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy”, a document put out in February 2008 by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, in which the following passage appears: “Creativity is a dynamic process and we will continue to review and update the commitments in this strategy. But we are confident that it sets down a solid platform of support for creativity from the grass roots to the global stage.” Not only are many of the words interchangeable, but, as Orwell predicted, there is also something sinister about seeing them thrown together like that. The effect is a vagueness so oppressive that it makes it almost impossible to argue with. And this is precisely the point.

— Nina Power - Bamboozle, baffle and blindside

Jan. 14, 2013 at 12:23am

Flags with no meaning by Sonja Hornung deals with the [im]possibility of separating state from symbol, territory from ground, and meaning from matter.

(via Flags with no meaning)