FALL/WINTER 2012 RESIDENCY CALL

APPLICATION DEADLINE: All applications must have been received via online application by 12:00PM (noon) June 22, 2012. All applicants will be informed of their application status by August 13, 2012.

calls/eyebeam-2012-fall-winter-residency-call" target="_blank">read more

Last summer, as we walked along the Thames after an opening at Tate Britain, my friend Megan Piper first shared her idea for The Line. She talked about a sculpture walk that would provide an opportunity to exhibit work that is currently hidden from public view. The great appeal of the idea was how relatively easy it would be to make happen. As an artist, I am used to the fact that the vast majority of my work is in storage. Her idea was not to commission work, but to provide an opportunity to present existing work that is currently stored, and unseen. Any artist, collector or museum can only ever show a small proportion of artworks that it possesses at any one time.

If you were to believe the headlines, being a personal assistant to a high-profile figure is all middle-of-the-night phone calls, outlandish demands and having the odd BlackBerry launched at you (as Naomi Campbell's former aide can attest).

New Contemporaries, the annual show of art students fresh out of college, has been going for 54 years now. The natural temptation is to view it as a talent contest for picking winners. And indeed the roll call of past exhibitors who have gone on to fame and fortune, from David Hockney, Damien Hirst and the Chapman Brothers to this year’s Turner Prize winner, Laure Prouvost, is pretty impressive. It’s the wrong way to visit the show, however. The pleasure of the exhibition, now at the ICA, is in just feeling the vibes.

We all know the bands and the singers who are Top of the Pops – but what about the record covers? Each year a shortlist of 50 record sleeves are nominated for the Best Art Vinyl award, now in its 9th year, by a panel of industry experts. The designs are exhibited across the UK and online at artvinyl.com from today, where the public can vote for their favourite covers, with the winners announced in January 2014.

Call for Proposals
DIGITAL LABOR: SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES

To be held at The New School, a university in New York City
NOVEMBER 14-16, 2014
#dl14

The third in The New School's Politics of Digital Culture Conference Series
Sponsored by The New School and The Institute for Distributed Creativity

DIGITAL LABOR: SWEATSHOPS, PICKET LINES, AND BARRICADES brings together
designers, labor organizers, theorists, social entrepreneurs, historians,
legal scholars,
independent researchers, cultural producers -- and perspectives from
workers themselves

Reflections on Event Score, with responses from Eric KM Clark

By Jesse Gotfrit

After Event Score, Western Front’s three-day, Fluxus-oriented festival that took place from November 14 – 16, 2013, Los Angeles-based sound artist and violinist Eric KM Clark shared with us some elaborated thoughts on the works he performed, as well as on his influences and the effect of his own compositions on listeners.

During Clark’s Friday night performance,  the sounds that emerged from within the darkness of the stage, which was occupied at times with bodies’ unfurling forms, felt ritualistic and esoteric, futuristic and strange. The visceral and uncanny effects of the pieces silenced the room. In conjunction with Clark’s performance, the audience members were encouraged to participate in a piece by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, Unfurl, which asks anyone involved with or observing the performance to unravel to the extent that they can whatever they may have brought with them (scarves, sweaters, etc.) onto the stage.

The four solo pieces Clark presented, as well as the fifth piece of the evening, which he composed himself and had performed by the Now Orchestra Workshop participants, demonstrated Clark’s dynamic technique and style and, ultimately, gave the audience an auditory peek inside his mind. The works also offered some perspective with respect to his career and provided an introduction to the composers – all of whom he has had the opportunity to work with personally – who inspired his interests and direction as a performer.

The first piece Clark performed was James Tenney’s Koan (1971) for solo violin, which was part of Tenney’s Postal Pieces (1965 – 71) series. It reflects an acute awareness of intonation, left hand finger movements, and bow speed. The performer bows eight to ten duples (pairs of notes) per bow, then moves the lowest note of the pair approximately one-eighth of a tone up. It finishes on a held E double octave, which eventually dissipates into nothing as the bow inches toward the bridge. The composition is essentially a series of instructions that call for particular bowing speeds while the performer completes various patterns that move up along the fingerboard. The character of the piece could be taken as ambient and entrancing. Clark used the words ‘thoughtful’ and ‘meditative’ as useful descriptors, considering the definition of the term ‘Koan’: a paradox for meditation used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment.

Clark admits, “I lose myself when playing this piece, and also pay quite a bit of attention to left hand finger movement and bow speed; relaxing while completely focused. One can see the piece perhaps as an extreme simplification, as if the composer were using a microscope to isolate a repetitive element.”

The second piece Clark performed was My Lai 1968, written by Canadian composer Wolf Edwards, with whom Clark began working in 2002 while both were studying at the University of Victoria.

“Many of the sounds created during the Edwards piece I played were different from our conditioned notions of how the violin should sound. It is just because it’s another sound quality that perhaps some people are not accustomed to … [My Lai 1968] is specifically notated with pitches and when to perform certain effects and noises, and even suggests a rather concrete timeframe – Edwards indicates a rhythmical or metrical stress or ictus – which I go from abiding by to ignoring if I want the piece to go a certain way. Also, it would be nearly impossible to interpret the pieces played, especially graphic or involved scores like Wolf Edwards’ piece, in a convincing fashion without technical training on an instrument. Even the sounds Edwards asks for are derived from the classical tradition, and though many classical musicians would find that comment surprising and possibly disagree, I believe that every composer of all time has helped evolve musical direction and sounds.”

The third work of the evening was Percussion Sculpture No. 1, composed in 2007 by American composer Lisa R. Coons. Clark put aside his violin and actually played Coons’ sculpture, which was devised out of scrap yard metal, as an instrument, utilizing many different objects as well as his violin bow.

“I programmed the Coons piece for two reasons,” Clark states. “The fact that it was a merging of visual art and music, which I find to be part of the Fluxus tradition, and I wanted an amplified work to contrast the Edwards piece. I’m also fascinated with different forms of notation, and in her case there was no notation – the instrument itself is part of the composition. In fact, the instrument  has the same title as the piece I played – Percussion Sculpture No. 1. I’m also a huge fan of Lisa Coons and have worked with her extensively. She has taught me hands on many different sound worlds to explore via different techniques.”

The fourth piece was another Tenney composition, written in 1964, called Ergodos II with Instrumental Response. The piece involves two components, the first being a score in which the notes are points in all four quadrants of a grid. The second component is a tape, which plays certain notes and sounds from the grid. After hearing a note from the tape, the performer must then respond with the corresponding note opposite the one played, enabling the performance of the piece to be almost completely spontaneous. The sounds from the tape are clearly of electronic origin and could be described as reminiscent of early technological sounds, as if they had been emitted from a ship’s sonar system or a science fiction film’s spaceship control panel.

According to Clark, “The definition behind the piece is very important, and definitely supports an argument for the music having basis in mathematics – at least it does with this piece.”

The term ‘ergodic’, from which the piece’s title derives, refers to two common definitions: (1) of or relating to a process in which every sequence or sizable sample is equally representative of the whole; and, (2) involving or relating to the probability that any state will recur, especially cases in which there is zero probability that any state will never recur.

“Music is definitely based on mathematics, even if people don’t realize it,” Clark informs us. “From the harmonic series, which became a huge influence on James Tenney when he first started exploring the world of just intonation, to exploring basic chord progressions and where harmonics or overtones appear on instruments. One can see the direct influence of mathematics is this ergodic model and the grid having sound and reaction.”

“I really enjoy the human element added to the concrete,” Clark continues. “I actually had never done a solo version of this piece before but I think it works very well as a solo, or duet if you count the tape part as another performer.”  Clark possesses very detailed parts for this piece for most members of the instrument families, meaning that the piece could be performed by an entire orchestra.

The fifth and final piece of the evening was Clark’s own Deprivation Music. For the performance of this work, Clark called upon participants of the New Orchestra Workshop, a 15-piece improvising ensemble which employs a number of instruments ranging from accordion to guitar, and asked them to wear blindfolds and noise cancelling headphones which dispelled white noise. Much of the orchestra’s contributions were drone-like, with most holding a single sustained note for long periods of time. One of the ideas embedded within the piece reflects the composer’s curiosity about what quality the music takes on when the performers cannot see or hear each other, or listen for intonation or pitch.  The only prescribed instructions: over a period of time, perform between five and eleven long tones, with only occasional mention as to the desired length of silence between notes.

When asked about his fascination with spontaneity, Clark responded: “Any piece has elements of spontaneity, except I suppose tape pieces, and from my program I’d say the Coons piece, the second Tenney piece, and my composition most fit the indeterminate designation. And I love uncertain outcomes, with the key being that they’re given devotion and taken seriously. In my Deprivation Music, I’m curious to see how people will interpret the direction and when they’ll do certain things. To me, the mistakes (things the performers didn’t necessarily mean to do) are just as interesting as random chords building up. I’m most impressed when silence develops, since it seems to be becoming rarer and rarer in that particular piece. And I adore silence, or what happens during moments of inaction.”

When asked about a singular intention or theme behind all the pieces presented, Clark replied, “I don’t like or try to evoke a specific response when programming or performing. I have interpreted many works from the Fluxus tradition over the years, among many other styles, and do have a fondness for the thought involved as a composer and performer. Yet, I can’t say I have any singular intention in creating music. With the concert you witnessed, you could see my love of interpreting different situations. I like how every piece I presented was different from the other, sometimes in an extreme way, yet to me putting them all together made a lot of sense. As every single piece from the program had a very human element involved – be it the solo pieces I performed, or the individuals who performed my deprivation piece – every one of them was removed from being influenced by the others, yet all of the indeterminate sounds built upon each other randomly to harmonize with each other. So I’d say the spontaneity of human nature and interpretation was a very important part of the entire program: from bow strokes and eighth tones in Koan, to Wolf’s sound world and my interpretation of the timing, to the Coons piece and how I was interpreting from things she’d shown me, to the other Tenney piece, where what I heard and quickly moved around the graph to interpret in real time caused almost an auditory look inside my brain.”

To elaborate on Clark’s roots in the Fluxus movement, it would be important to note that the night before his own show, he participated in a round table discussion at Western Front with Graham Christofferson (who performs under the solo project WORKER), local drummer Anju Singh, and Wolf Edwards to discuss the legacy of George Maciunas’ Fluxus Manifesto of 1963. The initial intentions of Maciunas’ manifesto were to “purge the world of professional and commercial culture, and purge the world of dead, imitation, artificial, abstract, illusionistic, and mathematical art.” These intentions surely have relevance today, yet during the round table discussion, Clark suggested that after being offered gallery space and opportunities for exposure, the original Fluxus members perhaps contradicted their own manifesto. Many of the sound artists who associated with the Fluxus movement were classified as abstractionists and were typically only appreciated by dilettantes and the bourgeoisie.

Clark finds his compositions to be less urgent and anarchistic than those expressed within the Fluxus Manifesto, while being very thoughtful and personal. “I hope the pieces I write and perform cause people to think and even zone out, then come back to reality. And with a program such as the one I presented, I fully expect the same person who really enjoyed one piece to perhaps completely dislike one of the other ones. I just like them all, and I guess the Event Score concert was also, in a way, a recent retrospective of things I enjoy performing and experimenting with.”

January 2014

Jesse Gotfrit is a first year English student at Simon Fraser University. He has written articles for the counter current online magazine The Tyee, and the youth-run online magazine Lotusland. His other endeavours consist of creative writing, including short stories and poetry, performing slam poems, and playing music on guitar and piano.

The accompanying videos are excerpts taken from Eric KM Clark’s performance on November 15, 2013, as well as Dissonant Disco’s performance of Copious Flow and Quasar Saxophone Quartet’s performance of Wolf Edwards’ Predator Drone MQ-1, both of which took place at Western Front on November 16, 2013 as part of Event Score.

Exclusive offer!
Save 25% on tickets to the world premiere of Music from the New Wilderness when you book by January 23.

Reduced ticket prices will be available for purchase from noon on January 20 until midnight on January 23*. 

Save 25% by using promo code FRONT25 online or by phone through The Cultch Box Office at 604-251-1363.

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As the winner of this year’s prestigious Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award for Music in 2014, Western Front New Music will present the interdisciplinary production Music from the New Wilderness at The Cultch from February 11 – 15, 2014.

Music from the New Wilderness offers new perspectives on culture, remoteness, and the vanishing wilderness experience.  An immersive exploration of the B.C. soundscape, the production features new compositions by Adam Basanta, Christian Calon, Alician Hansen, Jennifer Schine, and Jesse Zubot; a string quartet comprised of Peggy Lee, Jean Réne, Jesse Zubot, and Joshua Zubot; with lighting by Jonathan Ryder and visuals by Krista Belle Stewart.

Click here for more information.

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*Valid for A & B seats for all performances. When purchasing online, simply enter the code into the ‘Discount Code’ field at the checkout page. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Offer may not be applied to past purchases. No cash value. Regular admission after January 23: $40 / $31 / $18.

Hi Chris,

Hmm, I didn't recall that Ian's article was referring specifically to the video game industry but had the impression it was alluding to all forms of user-generated sharing. Maybe I got that wrong.

But yes I do imagine his article was at least in part driven by the reaction against the blind utopianism you refer to, a response I can definitely understand even at this remove from silicon valley where the resulting disparity is less visible.

And yes this discussion has been going on for a while, and I've disagreed with Trebor in the past around here about whether or not contributing 'user-generated content' to facebook and other social networks constitutes exploitation, in part for the reasons I mentioned in my post. Which is maybe why I thought the argument was about freely contributing to any online community and not the most obviously problematic cases of 'real work' being replaced by freely given labour.

I still believe that given the enormous opportunity (and need) that exists to invent and t

Paul Graham,
Untitled (Smoking girl in orange light), 1996–98, from the series end of an age.
Chromogenic print, 179.5 x 133.7 cm.
Gift of Alison and Alan Schwartz, 2000. 2000/1348 © Paul Graham; courtesy Pace Gallery and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.

Click to play:

Download 57.1MB MP3

Recorded: Oct. 17, 2013, at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 1:23:13

Paul Graham is a British photographer based in New York. Lauded as “a profound force for renewal of the deep photographic tradition of engagement with the world,” he was awarded the 2012 Hasselblad award for major achievements in photography.

In conjunction with the exhibition Light My Fire: Some Propositions about Portraits and Photography

Generously supported by Penny Rubinoff

Sara Angelucci,
Aviary (Male Passenger Pigeon/extinct),
2013.
© 2013 Sara Angelucci.
Courtesy of the artist.

Sara Angelucci,
Aviary (Female Passenger Pigeon/extinct),
2013.
© 2013 Sara Angelucci.
Courtesy of the artist.

Click to play:

Download 125.3MB MP3

Recorded: Jan. 15, 2014, at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 01:31:16

Artist-in-residence Sara Angelucci; writer and historian Matthew Brower, Mark Peck, Royal Ontario Museum Ornithology Technician; and Bridget Stutchbury, author and Professor of Ornithology at York University, gathered to discuss the extinction and endangerment of North American birds as well as art and society’s relationship with the natural environment. The talk was moderated by the AGO’s curator of Canadian Art, Andrew Hunter.

The discussion was followed by a three-course meal served in FRANK restaurant, specially prepared by executive chef Jeff Dueck in consultation with Sara Angelucci. The main dish featured a vegetarian “pigeon-less” pie to mark the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon, formerly one of the most abundant birds in North America, was pushed to extinction in 1914 due to habitat destruction and over hunting. Dinner and dessert were each paired with a choice of white or red Ontario wine.

Speaker Bios

Sara Angelucci is a Toronto-based visual artist who works primarily with photography, video and audio, exploring vernacular archival materials such as home movies, snap-shots and vintage portraits and their limited ability to convey the exact sense of a lived experience. Working with these images Angelucci seeks to reposition them in the present, shedding light on their broader context and histories outside of the frame.

Matthew Brower is a lecturer in Museum Studies in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. He writes on issues in animal studies, the history and theory of photography and contemporary art. He is the Author of Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography (University of Minnesota Press 2010). He has curated exhibitions in historical and contemporary art including Mieke Bal: Nothing is Missing, Gord Peteran: Recent Works, The Brothel Without Walls, Suzy Lake: Political Poetics, and Collective Identity │Occupied Spaces.

Mark Peck is the Collection Manager in Ornithology, Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. He is also involved in museum exhibits and programs and field research in South America, New Jersey and the Hudson Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario. In addition, he is the coordinator of the Ontario Nest Records Scheme, the ROM liaison for the Ontario Bird Records Committee and the program director for the Toronto Ornithological Club. In his off hours he is an avid bird photographer, traveling extensively for both his profession and his hobby. He has authored or coauthored numerous scientific and popular articles on birds and hundreds of his images have been published in books, magazines and on websites. Mark has been with the ROM since 1983.

Bridget Stutchbury is a professor in the Department of Biology at York University, Toronto. She completed her M.Sc. at Queen’s University and her PhD at Yale and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. Since the 1980s, she has studied migratory songbirds to understand their behaviour, ecology and conservation. Her current research focuses on studying the incredible migration journeys of songbirds to help halt the severe declines in many species. She serves on the board of Wildlife Preservation Canada and is the author of Silence of the Songbirds (2007) and The Bird Detective (2010).

Courtesy of Eva Varga.

In 2013, the Art Gallery of Ontario proudly presented a career-spanning exhibition of artist Sorel Etrog’s work, featuring his archetypal sculptures and his rarely seen film, Spiral, plus drawings, paintings, book illustrations and prints from both the Gallery’s and private collections. Born in Romania, Etrog came to Toronto in 1963 and his career here left an undeniable mark, both on our cityscape and the many people in Toronto’s art community who knew and admired him.

Below AGO CEO and director Matthew Teitelbaum reflects on Etrog’s passing:

I am truly saddened to learn that Sorel Etrog, a great Canadian artist, has passed away. We at the AGO had the privilege of working with Sorel recently on an exhibition that spanned the breadth of his impressive career, and from that opportunity came a meaningful understanding of his legacy. A sculptor, painter, draughtsman, filmmaker and writer, Sorel was one of the most multifaceted artists of his generation. Born in Romania, he arrived in Canada bearing poignant personal experiences that informed his work. His references to other traditions enriched an emerging conversation in the 1960s about contemporary art in a relatively insulated world, suggesting a connectedness that was largely unimagined at the time. This deep and ongoing search for ways to us all to connect will be visible for generations to come in Toronto, the city Sorel loved, where several public installations of his sculptures have left an indelible mark on the urban landscape and our public imagination. I considered Sorel a friend, and will miss him. I offer my heartfelt condolences to his sister, his extended family and his longtime assistant, Eva.

About Sorel Etrog

Sorel Etrog was best known for his abstracted figurative sculpture. The statue he created for the Canadian Film Award in 1968 is recognizable to many Canadians as the Genie, and his massive Sun Life on the northeast corner of King Street and University Avenue is a landmark for many Torontonians. However, his lesser-known collaborations with Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Marshall McLuhan convey the profoundly human – and humane – aspects of an artist whose thoughts encompass sculptural and metaphorical considerations of connection, passage, relationship and continuity.

AGO artist-in-residence Jim Munroe has transformed the Community Gallery into a classic arcade with a pop-up installation of three retrofitted arcade cabinets called Torontrons. Engineered by The Hand Eye Society and produced by Munroe, each Torontron is loaded with six contemporary video games designed by Toronto video-game artists. The pop-up arcade cabinets have appeared all over Winnipeg and in Toronto — recently at Academy of the Impossible, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Roy Thompson Hall and the Projection Booth Cinema — and have inspired similar international projects in New York, Shanghai, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and beyond.

Image courtesy of Jim Munroe/The Hand Eye Society.

From Feb. 1 to March 21, 2014, visit the Community Gallery on our concourse level to play – no quarters required! And before you visit, preview some of the Torontron games online:

• A Friendship in 4 Colours
• Airshot Scott
• Gesundheit
• Heavy Weather
• Monster Puncher
• N Arcade
• Night of the Cephalopods
• Shlongg
• Star Fall High Roller

Want to know more? In late January, Munroe spoke about his residency on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning (listen here), and he will also give a pop-up talk at our February edition of First Thursdays. On Feb. 21, Munroe will host Fancy Videogame Party in collaboration with Wild Rumpus and the Hand Eye Society, bringing together some of the best multi-player, party and physical video games from around the world for one night only at the AGO. And you can see him at our Meet the Artists talk in March, when he’ll be in conversation with fellow indie culture artists Mark Connery and Jonathan Mak about their work, indie culture and how playfulness factors into their practices.

Each season, our education department offers courses for adults, youths and children that cover the fundamentals of art and art-making: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography as well as lectures that illuminate the history of art and where it is today. Beyond that, though, we aim to develop boundary-pushing educational experiences that expands students’ creative skills and knowledge. This session, a number of classes are available for the first time at the AGO, and we’re excited to tell you about them here (click on links for dates and more information).

In addition to the usual favourites, new programs for 2014 include:

Discovering Digital Games
This four-week workshop will introduce you to new creative practices in video games. Come in with questions and we’ll introduce you to some existing art games and show you how to create a simple video game for yourself. No previous gaming experience is necessary, although it is recommended to have an open and curious attitude about what games can be. Participants will need to bring their own Mac computers.

Portraits of Poets
This class will explore the portrait genre by working from live observation of a different poet each week. Each class will begin with a poet reciting and circulating a poem, followed by instruction in various painting and drawing techniques. Participating poets include bill bissett, Myna Wallin, George Elliott Clarke, Adam Sol, Dionne Brand, Rudyard Fearon, Ayesha Chatterjee, Sachiko Murakami and Olive Senior. A selection of student work from this class will be included in an exhibition in the AGO’s Community Gallery during National Poetry Month, April 2014. The course is presented in collaboration with the Poet Laureate of Toronto, George Elliott Clarke, and the League of Canadian Poets.

One of the six bone porcelain tea cups, English, dated approx. 1822-30.

Introduction to Tea with Diane Borsato
This hands-on workshop with fall 2013 AGO artist-in-residence Diane Borsato will introduce participants to the history of tea’s cultivation, and various cultural practices that have developed around its consumption. Students will learn about the production and defining characteristics of the five categories of tea — white, green, oolong, black, and pu-erh — as well as proper brewing and service techniques for the different styles.

Artists’ Books, Zines, Sketchbooks
How can a book be an artwork? How is a book physically made? This workshop introduces students to the traditions of artists’ books and zines and basic book-making techniques like simple binding, assembly and photocopy printing. Students will produce/bind their own sketchbooks or notebooks, their own photocopied zines and unique accordion-fold publications. The workshop will also include a visit to view the artists’ books and multiples in the AGO’s E.P. Taylor Research Library and Archives.

Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch for ‘Composition II’ (Skizze für “Komposition II”), 1909–10. Oil on canvas, 38 3/8 × 51 5/8 inches (97.5 × 131.2 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 45.961 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Art & Ideas: Modern Art, Modern Dance
Join field specialists in informal talks that explore the relationship between visual art and the choreography and dance of Europe in the years leading up to, and during, the First World War. Spotlighting artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, among others, the talks will also trace the achievements of these tumultuous years as artists experimented with new ways to create art while launching such movements as Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism.

Art & Ideas: Modern Art
Join field specialists in informal talks that explore the dynamism, creativity and innovation of art produced in Europe in the years leading up to, and during, the First World War. Spotlighting artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, among others, the talks will also trace the achievements of these tumultuous years as artists experimented with new ways to create art while launching such movements as Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism.

Learn more about these courses and more for kids, youths and adults, plus how to sign up, at ago.net. Registration for spring 2014 courses opens Feb. 14, 2014.

Imagination takes over — and the intangible becomes real

Each year the Royal Academy of Arts is transformed by the Summer Exhibition, as more than 1,000 works go on display in the world's biggest open-submission art show. But what is left after the art works have gone?

A lecture by Dr. Jennifer Sliwka, National Gallery, in support of the Renaissance Impressions exhibition.

1–2pm; doors open at 12.30pm; no entry after 1pm.

Please arrive before 12:50pm at which point any pre-booked seats that are unclaimed will be released. These released seats will be made available to those waiting at the door of the lecture; however, we cannot guarantee that...

A lecture by Arturo Galansino, exhibition curator, in support of the 'Renaissance Impressions: Chiaroscuro woodcuts from the Collections of Georg Baselitz and the Albertina, Vienna' exhibition.

1–2pm; doors open at 12.30pm; no entry after 1pm.

Please arrive before 12:50pm at which point any pre-booked seats that are unclaimed will be released. These released seats will be made available to those waiting at the door of the lecture; however, we cannot guarantee that there will be...

“ANDO COLLECTION”
at Ando Gallery (Kiyosumi, Ryogoku area)
(2014-01-14 - 2014-03-22)

ANDO GALLERY is pleased to announce “ANDO COLLECTION”, a group exhibition of selected works by the gallery artists. Featured artists who have been attracting attention in Japan and overseas are Ricarda Roggan, Aoi Sasai, Seiya Shinotsuka and Shonah Trescott. RICARDA ROGGAN Born in Dresden, Germany in 1972, Roggan studied photography at and received a master’s degree from Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig in 2004. She also studied at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. In the exhibition “Zwischen Wirklichkeit und Bild: Positionen deutscher Fotografie der Gegenwart” at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2005, Roggan received attentions as the youngest artist. In her solo show at ANDO GALLERY in 2011, the works from the series “Ausgänge”, “RESET” and “Sedimente” were exhibited. SASAI Aoi Born in Kanagawa in 1986, Sasai graduated from the Graduate School of Art and Design, Musashino Art University, with a Master’s degree in Painting. She oil-paints humorously-shaped trees blowing in the wind against a grey background suggesting of disquiet. In 2013, Sasai participated in VOCA 2013 in March, and in her second exhibition at ANDO GALLERY in June, Sasai presented new paintings which give the impression of new development by featuring trees, her familiar motif. As an emerging artist, Sasai’s further steps are expected. SHINOTSUKA Seiya Born in Kumamoto in 1970, Shinotsuka graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting, Tama Art University in 1996. In the group exhibition “MOT Annual 2006: No Border” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo in 2006, Shinotsuka showed abstractly depicted landscapes drawn on paper using oil pastels. The images appearing in the works are the artist’s “inner landscape” rooted in his own memories and experiences, which implies Shinotsuka’s main theme “the circulation of the atmosphere”: one of the universal phenomena. After residing in Germany for one year, Shinotsuka showed new works in his solo exhibition at ANDO GALLERY in 2013. In the autumn of 2014, a solo exhibition is scheduled at the Tsunagi Art Museum in Kumamoto. SHONAH TRESCOTT Born in Australia in 1982, Trescott graduated from the National Art School, Sydney in 2004. She paints with oil, using themes drawn from the history of Western European art and motifs such as landscapes and still-life which she observes directly. In her second solo show “Drawn into the Light” at ANDO GALLERY in 2012, the artist presented paintings, photographs and silkscreen prints derived from the artist’s living experience in the Arctic where she visited as an artist-in-residence. She now lives and works in Puerto Rico. [Image: Ricarda Roggan “RESET 4” 2011 C-Print 120x150cm Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and ANDO GALLERY]

All About Eating
at Kawasaki City Museum (Setagaya, Kawasaki area)
(2014-01-11 - 2014-03-30)

This exhibition of food-related artwork from the museum’s collection is an opportunity to reconsider our culinary culture from the past through the present in a sincere, enjoyable, and straight-forward way. Venue: Art Gallery [Related Events] Curator’s Talks Dates: 1/18 (Sat), 2/1 (Sat), 2/15 (Sat) from 14:00 Free [Image: Ludwig Hohlwein “Restaurant Wilheim Mozer” (1909) Miura Collection]

Award Exhibition" />
17th Taro Okamoto Contemporary Art Award Exhibition
at Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki (Setagaya, Kawasaki area)
(2014-02-08 - 2014-04-06)

Taro Okamoto was an artist leading his era, always challenging towards something new. And it is this spirit which the Taro Okamoto Contemporary Art Award attempts to foster, placing a spotlight on artists who with unique insight throw a cutting message to society. In the 17th volume of this award 20 artists have been selected from 780 submissions, all pointing towards the possibilities of art in the 21st Century. [Image: Kyun-chome “Flow in Red”] [Related Events] Gallery Talk Date: 14:00-15:00 Venue: Special Exhibitions Gallery Admission: Free Schedule: 23rd February Kyun-chome, Yusuke Suzuki, Iichiro Tanaka x Juro Tanaka, Ryoichi Nakamura 26th February Art Horymen, Hazuki Komatsu, Japonica 9th March Nellow Akamatsu, Atsuki Takamoto, Shinichiro Yoshida 6th April Mayumi Kuri, Masayoshi Koyama, Ena Nagao, Waka Yoshida *For further details please refer to the museum website.

“100 Years of Taisei Sato - The Eternal Moment of Sparkle”
at Tenshin Memorial Museum Of Art, Ibaraki (Greater Tokyo area)
(2014-03-01 - 2014-04-13)

Awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1922, and emerging as the leader of the post-war nihonga art scene Taisei Sato was a master of the brush, bringing new depths to the beauty of nature. This exhibition marks 100 years since his birth with a collection of 66 bird and flower landscapes accompanied by various sketches. [Related Events] Lecture “The Brilliance of a Shining Life - The World of Taisei Sato” Speaker: Harumi Yasuda (art historian) Date: 22nd March(Sat) 14:00-15:30 Concert Date: 23rd March(Sun) 14:00 Venue: Lecture Hall Featuring: Toshiko Nakazawa, Makiko Ochiai (conductor), Naoko Tanaka, Hiroko Toyoda (Piano), Mitsuru Terunuma(Cello) and more

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“Hoki Museum Award Exhibition Vol. 1”
at Hoki Museum (Greater Tokyo area)
(2013-11-15 - 2014-05-18)

Showcasing 56 selected works from the first Hoki Museum Award competition, including the grand prize winner Makoto Yamamoto’s intimate depictions of women, along with Akiko Kawarada’s tracing through history and memory through the image of her grandmother, as well as the work of Makoto Ogiso　exploring embodiments of life and death. [Image: Makoto Yamamoto “Memories of April 3rd”]

Kazue Yoneda “Scenes of Happiness”
at Galerie Nichido (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-03-13 - 2014-03-25)

Recipient of the Kenzo Matumura Award in the 44th Showa-kai Exhibition, Kazue Yoneda here presents his first solo exhibition in Tokyo with 20 new oil paintings which describe idyllic scenes of the English Cotswolds and the Italian Siena fields. [Image: Kazue Yoneda “To where the light shines” Oil painting]

“Spring Edo Painting Festival - The Edo Painting of the 19th Century”
at Fuchu Art Museum (Musashino, Tama area)
(2014-03-21 - 2014-05-06)

Placing a spotlight on the final century of the Edo period, this exhibition examines the so called decadence of culture at this time and reviews the particular crystallization of creativity which may be seen in the works of such masters as Denzen Aodo, Itsura Suzuki, Kuniyoshi Utagawa and Hokusai Katsushika along with the Edo painting of Kiyochika Kobayashi and Yuichi Takahashi. Part 1 3/21(Fri)-4/13(Sun) Part 2 4/15(Tues)-5/6(Tues) [Related Events] 1. Slide Lecture Dates: Every Sunday 14:00/15:00 (20 mins) Venue: Lecture Room Admission: Free 2. Exhibition Lecture “Japan and Europe in the 19th Century” Date: 4/29(Tues) 14:00- Venue: Lecture Room Presenter: Yumiko Oto “Edo Painting of the 19th Century” Date: 5/3(Sat) 14:00- Speaker: Nobuhisa Kaneko Venue: Lecture Room

The touchscreen recently installed in the Thomson Collection of European Art (Gallery 107). Photo by Craig Boyko/Art Gallery of Ontario.

The Thomson Collection of European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario includes about 900 objects, mainly northern European sculpture and decorative arts dating from the early Middle Ages to the mid-19th century.

In addition to the collection’s cornerstone artwork, Peter Paul Rubens’ The Massacre of the Innocents, it has both sacred and secular objects including a renowned group of medieval and Baroque ivories, as well as fine examples of silver, Limoges enamel, boxwood carving, medieval manuscripts, carved portrait medallions and nearly 100 portrait miniatures from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It’s a varied collection that captures visitors’ interest, and they’ve told us that they want to know more.

Staff from our Digital Services department worked hard to create a new entry point to the Thomson Collection, in the form of an interactive touchscreen. You’ll find the screen close to the AGO’s entrance (Gallery 107), a room that also contains two paintings (from the Thomson Collection’s Canadian works), a ship model and a vitrine full of small objects from the European Collection.

These objects and paintings represent the Thomson Collection’s European, Canadian and Ship Model components, and each object has a story behind it and reason, including why Ken Thomson collected and appreciated it. In addition to getting an introduction to Thomson and the legacy of his collection, visitors can learn about the objects in depth by selecting them on the touchscreen. They are also directed to other spaces in the Gallery with more of the same kind of object.

Photo by Craig Boyko/Art Gallery of Ontario.

How’d we do it?

The display screen is Microsoft’s 55-inch Perceptive Pixel touch display (learn more about it here). To get the project up and running, AGO photographers had to re-shoot each item using “focus stacking.” This process extends the depth of field in a shot (making more of it in sharp focus) without losing file data using multiple exposures and post-production software.

A folding knife with boxwood handle from the Thomson Collection of European Art. The image on the right — created using the photo-stacking technique — has an extended depth of field.

A shallow depth of field has always been an issue with macro photography. The objects included in the touchscreen project are almost all very small, so we adopted this photo merging or “stacking” software as a new approach. It allows the viewer to see these detailed objects more clearly than ever before.

What’s next? Our Digital team is full of ideas on how to make the experience even better, including enhanced way-finding and the ability to create personalized tours. We hope you’ll spend a few minutes with the touchscreen on your next visit. And if you’ve already had a chance to try it out, share your thoughts on the experience in the comments below.

Courtesy of Eva Varga.

In 2013, the Art Gallery of Ontario proudly presented a career-spanning exhibition of artist Sorel Etrog’s work, featuring his archetypal sculptures and his rarely seen film, Spiral, plus drawings, paintings, book illustrations and prints from both the Gallery’s and private collections. Born in Romania, Etrog came to Toronto in 1963 and his career here left an undeniable mark, both on our cityscape and the many people in Toronto’s art community who knew and admired him.

Below AGO CEO and director Matthew Teitelbaum reflects on Etrog’s passing:

I am truly saddened to learn that Sorel Etrog, a great Canadian artist, has passed away. We at the AGO had the privilege of working with Sorel recently on an exhibition that spanned the breadth of his impressive career, and from that opportunity came a meaningful understanding of his legacy. A sculptor, painter, draughtsman, filmmaker and writer, Sorel was one of the most multifaceted artists of his generation. Born in Romania, he arrived in Canada bearing poignant personal experiences that informed his work. His references to other traditions enriched an emerging conversation in the 1960s about contemporary art in a relatively insulated world, suggesting a connectedness that was largely unimagined at the time. This deep and ongoing search for ways to us all to connect will be visible for generations to come in Toronto, the city Sorel loved, where several public installations of his sculptures have left an indelible mark on the urban landscape and our public imagination. I considered Sorel a friend, and will miss him. I offer my heartfelt condolences to his sister, his extended family and his longtime assistant, Eva.

About Sorel Etrog

Sorel Etrog was best known for his abstracted figurative sculpture. The statue he created for the Canadian Film Award in 1968 is recognizable to many Canadians as the Genie, and his massive Sun Life on the northeast corner of King Street and University Avenue is a landmark for many Torontonians. However, his lesser-known collaborations with Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Marshall McLuhan convey the profoundly human – and humane – aspects of an artist whose thoughts encompass sculptural and metaphorical considerations of connection, passage, relationship and continuity.

AGO artist-in-residence Jim Munroe has transformed the Community Gallery into a classic arcade with a pop-up installation of three retrofitted arcade cabinets called Torontrons. Engineered by The Hand Eye Society and produced by Munroe, each Torontron is loaded with six contemporary video games designed by Toronto video-game artists. The pop-up arcade cabinets have appeared all over Winnipeg and in Toronto — recently at Academy of the Impossible, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Roy Thompson Hall and the Projection Booth Cinema — and have inspired similar international projects in New York, Shanghai, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and beyond.

Image courtesy of Jim Munroe/The Hand Eye Society.

From Feb. 1 to March 21, 2014, visit the Community Gallery on our concourse level to play – no quarters required! And before you visit, preview some of the Torontron games online:

• A Friendship in 4 Colours
• Airshot Scott
• Gesundheit
• Heavy Weather
• Monster Puncher
• N Arcade
• Night of the Cephalopods
• Shlongg
• Star Fall High Roller

Want to know more? In late January, Munroe spoke about his residency on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning (listen here), and he will also give a pop-up talk at our February edition of First Thursdays. On Feb. 21, Munroe will host Fancy Videogame Party in collaboration with Wild Rumpus and the Hand Eye Society, bringing together some of the best multi-player, party and physical video games from around the world for one night only at the AGO. And you can see him at our Meet the Artists talk in March, when he’ll be in conversation with fellow indie culture artists Mark Connery and Jonathan Mak about their work, indie culture and how playfulness factors into their practices.

Each season, our education department offers courses for adults, youths and children that cover the fundamentals of art and art-making: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography as well as lectures that illuminate the history of art and where it is today. Beyond that, though, we aim to develop boundary-pushing educational experiences that expands students’ creative skills and knowledge. This session, a number of classes are available for the first time at the AGO, and we’re excited to tell you about them here (click on links for dates and more information).

In addition to the usual favourites, new programs for 2014 include:

Discovering Digital Games
This four-week workshop will introduce you to new creative practices in video games. Come in with questions and we’ll introduce you to some existing art games and show you how to create a simple video game for yourself. No previous gaming experience is necessary, although it is recommended to have an open and curious attitude about what games can be. Participants will need to bring their own Mac computers.

Portraits of Poets
This class will explore the portrait genre by working from live observation of a different poet each week. Each class will begin with a poet reciting and circulating a poem, followed by instruction in various painting and drawing techniques. Participating poets include bill bissett, Myna Wallin, George Elliott Clarke, Adam Sol, Dionne Brand, Rudyard Fearon, Ayesha Chatterjee, Sachiko Murakami and Olive Senior. A selection of student work from this class will be included in an exhibition in the AGO’s Community Gallery during National Poetry Month, April 2014. The course is presented in collaboration with the Poet Laureate of Toronto, George Elliott Clarke, and the League of Canadian Poets.

One of the six bone porcelain tea cups, English, dated approx. 1822-30.

Introduction to Tea with Diane Borsato
This hands-on workshop with fall 2013 AGO artist-in-residence Diane Borsato will introduce participants to the history of tea’s cultivation, and various cultural practices that have developed around its consumption. Students will learn about the production and defining characteristics of the five categories of tea — white, green, oolong, black, and pu-erh — as well as proper brewing and service techniques for the different styles.

Artists’ Books, Zines, Sketchbooks
How can a book be an artwork? How is a book physically made? This workshop introduces students to the traditions of artists’ books and zines and basic book-making techniques like simple binding, assembly and photocopy printing. Students will produce/bind their own sketchbooks or notebooks, their own photocopied zines and unique accordion-fold publications. The workshop will also include a visit to view the artists’ books and multiples in the AGO’s E.P. Taylor Research Library and Archives.

Vasily Kandinsky, Sketch for ‘Composition II’ (Skizze für “Komposition II”), 1909–10. Oil on canvas, 38 3/8 × 51 5/8 inches (97.5 × 131.2 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, 45.961 © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Art & Ideas: Modern Art, Modern Dance
Join field specialists in informal talks that explore the relationship between visual art and the choreography and dance of Europe in the years leading up to, and during, the First World War. Spotlighting artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, among others, the talks will also trace the achievements of these tumultuous years as artists experimented with new ways to create art while launching such movements as Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism.

Art & Ideas: Modern Art
Join field specialists in informal talks that explore the dynamism, creativity and innovation of art produced in Europe in the years leading up to, and during, the First World War. Spotlighting artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso, among others, the talks will also trace the achievements of these tumultuous years as artists experimented with new ways to create art while launching such movements as Expressionism, Futurism and Cubism.

Learn more about these courses and more for kids, youths and adults, plus how to sign up, at ago.net. Registration for spring 2014 courses opens Feb. 14, 2014.

“Treasures / Harumichi Saito: photography”
at Watari-um, The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Omotesando, Aoyama area)
(2013-11-30 - 2014-03-16)

Watari-um presents the first major exhibition of the 30 year old artist Harumichi Saito, who began working in photography in 2008, going on to win a New Cosmos of Photography award in 2010 and furthering his particular approach to his practice in the wake of 3.11. Here Saito features 160 photographic prints alongside 200 projected images, featuring people with illness and disability as well as those from the gay and lesbian community in a reflection upon those deemed as minorities by society. In an age when we increasingly face greater hardship Saito finds a way to touch our senses and express his vision of a golden world. Here his impressive collection of photography reaches beyond the bounds of art, beyond the definitions of time and space to offer the audience strength though the very act of viewing.

“ANDO COLLECTION”
at Ando Gallery (Kiyosumi, Ryogoku area)
(2014-01-14 - 2014-03-22)

ANDO GALLERY is pleased to announce “ANDO COLLECTION”, a group exhibition of selected works by the gallery artists. Featured artists who have been attracting attention in Japan and overseas are Ricarda Roggan, Aoi Sasai, Seiya Shinotsuka and Shonah Trescott. RICARDA ROGGAN Born in Dresden, Germany in 1972, Roggan studied photography at and received a master’s degree from Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig in 2004. She also studied at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003. In the exhibition “Zwischen Wirklichkeit und Bild: Positionen deutscher Fotografie der Gegenwart” at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2005, Roggan received attentions as the youngest artist. In her solo show at ANDO GALLERY in 2011, the works from the series “Ausgänge”, “RESET” and “Sedimente” were exhibited. SASAI Aoi Born in Kanagawa in 1986, Sasai graduated from the Graduate School of Art and Design, Musashino Art University, with a Master’s degree in Painting. She oil-paints humorously-shaped trees blowing in the wind against a grey background suggesting of disquiet. In 2013, Sasai participated in VOCA 2013 in March, and in her second exhibition at ANDO GALLERY in June, Sasai presented new paintings which give the impression of new development by featuring trees, her familiar motif. As an emerging artist, Sasai’s further steps are expected. SHINOTSUKA Seiya Born in Kumamoto in 1970, Shinotsuka graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting, Tama Art University in 1996. In the group exhibition “MOT Annual 2006: No Border” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo in 2006, Shinotsuka showed abstractly depicted landscapes drawn on paper using oil pastels. The images appearing in the works are the artist’s “inner landscape” rooted in his own memories and experiences, which implies Shinotsuka’s main theme “the circulation of the atmosphere”: one of the universal phenomena. After residing in Germany for one year, Shinotsuka showed new works in his solo exhibition at ANDO GALLERY in 2013. In the autumn of 2014, a solo exhibition is scheduled at the Tsunagi Art Museum in Kumamoto. SHONAH TRESCOTT Born in Australia in 1982, Trescott graduated from the National Art School, Sydney in 2004. She paints with oil, using themes drawn from the history of Western European art and motifs such as landscapes and still-life which she observes directly. In her second solo show “Drawn into the Light” at ANDO GALLERY in 2012, the artist presented paintings, photographs and silkscreen prints derived from the artist’s living experience in the Arctic where she visited as an artist-in-residence. She now lives and works in Puerto Rico. [Image: Ricarda Roggan “RESET 4” 2011 C-Print 120x150cm Courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and ANDO GALLERY]

2013 Press Photography Exhibition
at Newspark - The Japan Newspaper Museum (Yokohama, Kanagawa area)
(2014-01-11 - 2014-03-30)

This exhibition introduces 250 news photographs taken in 2013 by photojournalists from the 34 newspapers, agencies, and broadcasters of the Tokyo Press Photographers Association. Taking the association’s top prize this year was a photo titled “Let’s Show Japan’s Strength” by Yomiuri reporter Munehisa Shigeta. It shows train station staff and passengers banding together to save a woman trapped between a train and the platform of JR Minami Urawa Station. Award-winning photographs for the biggest stories of 2013 in the categories of general interest, business, sports, and arts and culture are also on display. These photographs document news including the deaths of Japanese and foreign hostages in the Algerian terrorist incident, the selection of Tokyo as the host of the 2020 Olympics, the registration of Mt. Fuji as a World Heritage Site, and Rakuten’s championship victory in professional baseball. Grand-prix winners from regional press associations outside of Tokyo are also exhibited. Venue: The Japan Newspaper Museum 2F

Shingo Kanagawa “The Matters of the Others”
at Place M (Shinjuku area)
(2014-03-17 - 2014-03-23)

An exhibition of photography work from Kyoto born artist Shingo Kanagawa, who having been selected for the 26th and 28th Hitosubo photography exhibition and receiving the 12th Miki Jun Award, is currently undertaking postdoctoral research at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Yosuke Takeda “Stay Gold— Digital Flare”
at Kurenboh Chohouin Buddhist Temple Gallery (Ueno, Yanaka area)
(2014-03-26 - 2014-04-27)

“Stay Gold,” the title of this exhibition, comes from the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola film “The Outsiders.” Photographer Yusuke Takeda attempts to capture the light contained in moments precisely because they are difficult to preserve. “Digital Flare” is a new series produced with (allegedly) wrong techniques. It shows, in a simple way, that photography (straight photography) is not a record of reality. Takeda uses camera lenses from past decades to show the contrast between natural and artificial “remnants of light.” Open 10:00–4:00 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday by appointment only (please email for reservations). Only one viewer may enter the space at a time. Last entry at 3:00. [Related Event] L Pack Night The café L Pack presents a special spring selection of breads. Dates: Apr. 4 (Fri)–Apr. 6 (Sun) Please see the official website for information on other related events.

Today is International Migrants Day. Last week, I wrote about the failed deportation of Isa Muaza. Yesterday, entreglasgow.org/?page_id=914">Unity Centre Glasgow announced that another appeal by Muaza’s legal team had failed, and he was rescheduled for deportation, alongside a large number of others, on Tuesday night.

I heard at about 7pm that several detainees had been loaded onto vans at Harmondsworth Detention Centre and were on the move. I didn’t know where they were headed, but I knew that many previous flights had left from the private aviation area at Stansted Airport, a largely un-signposted collection of car parks and hangars on the western side of the airport. I arrived there at 8, just in time to see the first of several coaches and security vans, together with a police escort, arrive at the Inflite Jet Centre, a private customs and handling facility mostly used by private jets.

The coaches, five in all and probably from several different detention centres, arrived between 8 and 9, and were accompanied by silver vans bearing the logo of security company Tascor, formerly Reliance, who took over the role of deportation escorts from G4S in 2011 following the death of Jimmy Mubenga. Tascor has a page on its website called Our Values, where it boasts: “We steer clear of politics”. Most of the coaches were from WH Tours in Crawley, although one bore the bright yellow sun and jaunty typography of Just Go!

It is profoundly uncomfortable watching anonymous people of colour being loaded on and off vans and planes in the middle of the night under tight security. When you know a little of the background of the detainees, when you read their claims of torture and violence, their long battles to secure asylum, the institutional racism and homophobia, it’s terrible. But even without knowing these things, the manner in which it is done should tell you everything you need to know. The British Human Rights lawyer Gareth Peirce writes in Dispatches from the Dark Side, on UK complicity in torture, that “what is in fact the law precisely mirrors instinctive moral revulsion” but that “in this country, the government hardly needs such acceptance, since here the additional and crucial factor is that the public is unlikely to be given sufficient information to trigger revulsion.” Hence the night, the private terminals, charter flights, the hired coaches. All of this is deliberate: it is a policy of not being seen.

The detainees were kept on the coaches for some time, and there appeared to be some confusion about when they were going to depart. It’s standard practice in this situation to bring extra “reserve” deportees to the airport without warning, a practice condemned as inhumane by some MPs and the Inspector of Prisons. Before deportation, each detainee is issued with a plane ticket which gives the flight time – 22:20hrs in this case – and a flight number. As the flights are chartered, the flight number – here PVT091 – is internal, so it’s impossible to find out more details about it, except by going to the airport. The Home Office has been running deportation charter flights for some time, under as much secrecy as they can get away with, and refuses to disclose the companies involved in case it damages their commercial relationships. The ongoing deportation of Nigerians on charter flights is called “Operation Majestic”, but there are regular flights to many other countries, including “popular destinations” such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Corporate Watch published a comprehensive report on what they call collective expulsion last month.

On the tarmac by the jet centre sat a Titan Airways 767. Titan Airways is based at Stansted, and describes itself as “the UK’s most prestigious charter airline.” Its fleet ranges from small business aircraft to widebodied airliners:

Since it’s foundation in 1988, Titan Airways has grown into the UK’s most prestigious charter airline, specialising in bespoke air charter, tour operator programmes and high end / corporate air travel as well as airline sub charter and aircraft leasing. It brings the very best standards of care and comfort to all its passengers. Once safely aboard, they can relax and enjoy our superb in-flight service and a wide choice of cuisine and fine wines to complete the experience. Titan’s modern, reliable aircraft can operate from all major international and regional airports day and night, 365 days a year.

It’s cold, and wet, and dark, and some of the deportees have been sitting on board coaches for hours, while Tascor guards mill about, smoke and chat. As it approached midnight, there was more activity around the plane, and it appeared that all the deportees were on board as the coaches left the terminal compound empty and parked up outside. (The next day, Unity tells me that two people were taken off the flight at the last minute, but those people estimated that around 80 Nigerians and Ghanaians were on board, including Isa Muaza, who was taken straight to hospital on arrival in Lagos, and a woman who married a British citizen two years ago, and was not expected to be deported).

You can watch flights taking off from the far side of the airport, from a muddy lane alongside the north end of the runway. On the way over to it, I was stopped by the Police, who had been told I had been seen around the private aviation area. They were happy that I was a ‘spotter’ looking for planes – and advised me to join Essex Police’s Plane Watch scheme – but also warned me that the private aviation section was a restricted area, and I shouldn’t go there.

At 00:27, the Titan Airways 767 roared down the Stansted runway and into the night. Moments before, its call-sign appeared on Flightradar: AWC48A. And from there, an aircraft registration number: G-POWD.

We can see G-POWD on approach to Lagos a little after 6am. Two hours later, it’s on the move again, making the hop westwards from Lagos to Accra, the capital of Ghana, where it makes another stop. And then at 11am it appears to lift off back in the direction of London – at time of writing, it is probably somewhere over North Africa.

When I got back to my car around 1, I had a flat battery, and had to wait for a repair man. When he arrived, and I explained what I was doing in this godforsaken place, he told me he’d been at the Inflite Terminal recently too, to jump-start a brand-new Tascor transporter van, whose driver told him these flights happen all the time, and nobody knows about it, not even most of the people who work at the airport. “Makes you think,” he said. “Makes you think.”

*

Photos are available at Flickr

For some time, I have been threatening to write about the Render Ghosts. I was asked to contribute something to Electronic Voice Phenomena, an online literature and art project by Mercy and Penned in the Margins, and so I wrote about my recent trip to New Mexico, in search of the Render Ghosts:

I first noticed the Render Ghosts on the hoardings surrounding a new development near Finsbury Square. On the balconies of some vast, virtual tower, two pixelated figures looked out over a darkened London, a perfect red-pink gradient sunset behind them. He had short dark hair and stubble, wore a black jacket and blue jeans. She had a cropped red bob, white jacket, and a purple knee-length skirt. I didn’t know who they were, but I started seeing them everywhere.

Read the full piece over at EVP.

I also have a short essay and illustrations in the wonderful new Visual Editions‘ book of writing and maps, Where You Are, which also includes contributions from Joe Dunthorne, Geoff Dyer, Olafur Eliasson, Sheila Heti, and more.

To ask “Where You Are” invites a series of responses: cartographic, historical, social, spiritual, situational; discursive or prescriptive. The GPS system is a monumental network that provides a permanent “You Are Here” sign hanging in the sky, its signal a constant, synchronised timecode. It suggests the possibility that one may never need be lost again; that future generations will grow up not knowing what it means to be truly lost.

The book is available to order now, but you can read the essay, and see the illustrations (much beautified by the designers at Bibliothèque), alongside all the other contributions on the Where You Are website.

The astute among you might notice a strong similarity between the diagrams in Where You Are and the piece I made for Container some months back:

This 3D-printed object is the same thing under discussion in Where You Are:

This is a model of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a constellation of 24 satellites, in six orbital groups of four satellites, each orbital plane at 55 degrees inclination, and 60 degrees right ascension to its neighbour, 20,200 kilometres above the surface of the earth; a machine we are all living inside.

I’d had the original model sitting on my desk for some time before Tim asked me for a contribution to Container. In trying to draw and understand the GPS system as an abstract machine, I’d modelled the constellation in Sketchup – it was a natural step to flip-flop this nest of intersecting cones of influence back into the physical realm again, so that I could roll it between my fingers, as Einar and I did with airfix models of the drones, before the shadows (Einar’s own thinking about GPS, with Timo and Jørn, led to the Satellite Lamps project.) I call this the “Close Encounters” method.

A while back, I started the Laaaaaaandsat tumblr, which automatically posts, several times a day, every image released by the USGS Landsat observation programme – an ongoing, comprehensive survey of the planet by another satellite, 700km above the earth’s surface.

The endless stream of off-kilter images – reoriented so North is ‘up’ – remains a endless source of pleasure. So when Aperture magazine asked for 200 words on “What Matters Now” in photography, I thought of this little robot cameraman in the sky. 200 words is not enough, but it’s in the new issue.

NASA’s Landsat is the longest-running program dedicated to photographing the Earth from space, and has created millions of images since its inception in 1969. The first satellite, Landsat 1, was launched on July 23, 1972, atop a Delta 900 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its mission was to photograph the whole Earth using three cameras which see both visible light and the near-infrared, and a four-channel multispectral scanner. The scanner was the project’s greatest innovation as it reveals hidden details about the planet’s surface, producing data and imagery used for everything from disaster relief, to agriculture, to studying climate change.

In February of this year, the program continued with the launch of Landsat 8. This incarnation features a more powerful scanner which sees in the ultraviolet; the panchromatic; the shortwave, near-, and thermal-infrared; revealing the presence of dust and smoke, of chlorophyll, of sub-surface rock formations, and the shape of clouds. The satellite captures four hundred images every day, creating a complete picture of the planet every sixteen days. Every one of these images is in the public domain, allowing every one of us to use, benefit from, and marvel at this ever-growing, ever-changing automated portrait of our planet.

This week I was due to install another Drone Shadow, this one in Brisbane, Australia (that’s a planning mock-up, above). I had been invited by the Brisbane Writers Festival, and we had received permission from the Queensland State Library to install the work on their premises. Unfortunately, due to the actions of Arts Queensland, the department of the State Government with overall responsibility for the arts, it has been impossible to proceed with the work. The actions of Arts Queensland in this case have been both incredibly frustrating and boringly familiar: they have stalled, dissembled, obfuscated and lied, all in the service of silencing an artistic work and preventing a proper debate occurring, either about the work, or the government’s censorship of it. (For the record, there is a full account of my dealings with Arts Queensland available here.)

I’ve often been asked if I have got into any kind of trouble for creating the Drone Shadows before, and the answer has always been no. This is despite the fact that we have drawn them in Istanbul, during a period when the Turkish government was in negotiation to purchase Predator drones from the US, and in Washington DC – right next to the White House – at the height of the US drone war. But apparently the image – the bare outline – of a drone was too much for the government of Queensland.

In Istanbul we drew a Predator, in DC a Reaper. In Brisbane I proposed to draw a Global Hawk, the largest military unmanned aircraft currently in service. Late last year it was revealed that the United States flew secret Global Hawk spy missions from Air Force bases in Australia in 2001-2006. The programme was revealed by a group of amateur aviation historians who tracked the Global Hawks arriving and taking off. When they revealed details of the flights, they were visited by Australian defence security officials who demanded they not reveal details of the flights. An Australian senator who proposed to notify the public of the flights was silenced by the US Air Force, which demanded the flights remain classified.

Since then, Australia has been in prolonged negotiations with the US to purchase Global Hawks itself, announcing an AU$1 billion programme in 2004, rising to AU$3 billion in 2012. The latest election, which takes place quite coincidentally this Saturday, has led to further fierce debates over Australian defence and the drone program.

Australia’s domestic drone program is primarily aimed at “securing borders”, and its preference for maritime versions of the Global Hawk is due to the need for surveillance of immigration by sea. This program aims to ensure, in the words of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in July 2013, that “any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”, by shifting the problem to neighbouring countries such as Papua New Guinea. There is also a long history of asylum claimants being housed at former Air Force bases – and a long history of government objection to artworks dealing with the subject: see for example the story of Escape from Woomera, a political computer game about a detention camp in a remote Australian Defence Force base in South Australia.

One of the many reasons given by Arts Queensland for their opposition to the installation of the Drone Shadow was the opening at the Queensland Museum next door of an exhibition of thousands-year-old artefacts from Afghanistan, to which members of the local Afghan community had been invited. Arts Queensland expressed their view (after several weeks of denying any such issue) that this community might be made uncomfortable by the work. The community was never consulted, and the Museum itself raised no objection. Arts Queensland called it a “raw issue”. Indeed it is.

Australia’s Defence Forces have been involved in the war in Afghanistan since 2001. This contribution has included ships, manned aircraft, ground troops – and, more recently, drones.

The Royal Australian Air Force has been using drones in Afghanistan since 2009, when it first started to deploy the Israeli-built Heron drone, a twin-hulled surveillance drone the size of a light aircraft. At a 2012 promotional event on Australia’s Gold Coast, a short drive from Brisbane, Australia’s most senior military drone commander stated that the drone program was “like crack cocaine, a drug, for our guys involved – [they] just can’t get enough of it.”

These drones are in fact still owned by the Israeli manufacturer, and leased via a Canadian company – as Australia’s ABC News put it: “Israeli-owned drones, leased by Canadians, flown by Australians, fighting a war against Islamist insurgents in Afghanistan”. The RAAF drone teams are trained by Canadian and Israeli civilians at Amberley in Queensland, on the outskirts of Brisbane. Before they deploy to the field, they spend hours test-flying the drones over a simulated Afghan village, constructed in 2011, on the Woomera test range, close by the notorious refugee detention centre. (Picture above: a Heron drone parked at Woomera Air Base, South Australia, via Google Earth.)

The RAAF’s Herons are nominally unarmed, but they are equipped with lasers which allow them to mark targets for incoming airstrikes or artillery – the networking of contemporary military forces means that the formal distinctions between the capabilities of different weapons systems are increasingly meaningless. The drones are a key part of the “kill chain”, the process by which targets are selected and attacked by the entire system, and the ADF also calls on US and British armed Reaper drones to support its ground troops in battle.

In describing the contours of Australia’s relationship with drones, we see how, once again, such relationships extend beyond the individual aircraft to encompass far wider issues including domestic politics, international relations, warfare, immigration and networked technologies.

Drones are avatars of the the political process: they are instantiations of a set of ideologies and beliefs, made visible by their reification in electromechanical systems. When we talk about drones, we are really talking about the politics that demand, shape, and deploy them, and the politics which are made possible by them. This politics reflects the drones themselves: it is a politics of violence, of obfuscation, of radical inequality of sight and action, and it is sustained by that obfuscation and that inequality.

No wonder then that politicians are afraid of even artistic representations of the drone. No wonder they cite feelings of “discomfort” at even mentioning them, although in projecting this discomfort onto an immigrant population – without consultation – they reveal even more clearly the complicity of the technology in war and social oppression.

The Drone Shadow is not just a picture of a drone. It is a diagram of a political system. Every time we draw one, we use it to cast light on the actors who would prefer that the reality of their intentions and actions remain hidden.

This is the nature of networked technology today: it is the product of an embedded politics which it simultaneously obscures, through its apparent sophistication, and renders startlingly visible, through its explicit form. That invisibility is the intention of power; rendering it visible is the intention of art.

In the present case, power in all its petty exercise has done its utmost to render such a debate invisible. That it has succeeded for the moment, with the barest minimum of opposition from the cultural institutions which should oppose such exercises at every step, is saddening. It is also, I have to believe, unlikely and impossible to remain the case for long.

*

If you would like to draw your own Global Hawk shadow, you can download a schematic for the installation here.

Let us be clear: just as my work on the form of the book in the digital age was concerned not with the physical or digital object, but with people’s understanding and emotions concerning literature; just as my drone works are not about the objects themselves, but about the systems – technological, spatial, legal and political – which permit, shape and produce them, and about the wider implications of seeing and not seeing such technological, systematic, operations; so the New Aesthetic is concerned with everything that is not visible in these images and quotes, but that is inseparable from them, and without which they would not exist.

Much of the critical confusion around the New Aesthetic has clustered around the use of the term “aesthetic”, by which I meant simply, “what it looks like” – I wasn’t even really aware of how key the term aesthetics was to art historical and critical discourse. As a result of my use of this term, much of the critical reaction to it has only looked at the surface, and has – sometimes wilfully it feels – failed to engage with the underlying concerns of the New Aesthetic, its own critique and politics. This criticism still concerns itself only with images, despite the wealth of texts also included in the project, and the numerous recorded lectures I’ve given on the subject. The tumblr is just one aspect of, the sketchbook or playlist for, a wider project. In short, this form of criticism has been looking at the pixelated finger, not the moon.

There are two necessary understandings to counter this, I think. One is the important recognition that the New Aesthetic project is undertaken within its own medium: it is an attempt to “write” critically about the network in the vernacular of the network itself: in a tumblr, in blog posts, in YouTube videos of lectures, tweeted reports and messages, reblogs, likes, and comments. In this sense, from my perspective, it is as much work as criticism: it does not conform to the formal shapes – manifesto, essay, book – expected by critics and academics. As a result, it remains largely illegible to them, despite frequent public statements of the present kind.

But I think the deeper and more interesting aspect of this misreading of the New Aesthetic is that it directly mirrors what it is describing: the illegibility of technology itself to a non-technical audience. From the very first post about the New Aesthetic I have been talking about what these images reveal about the underlying systems that produce them, and/or the human viewpoint which frames them. It is impossible for me, with an academic background in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, with a practical background in literary editing and software programming, with a lifetime of interacting with the internet and other systems, not to look at these images and immediately start to think about not what they look like, but how they came to be and what they become: the processes of capture, storage, and distribution; the actions of filters, codecs, algorithms, processes, databases, and transfer protocols; the weight of datacenters, servers, satellites, cables, routers, switches, modems, infrastructures physical and virtual; and the biases and articulations of disposition and intent encoded in all of these things, and our comprehension of them.

And it’s worth bearing in mind too that many of the images are snapshots, or stills, in many forms, and not fully-formed objects. Whether a frame from an online video, or a screen capture of an online map (remember, digital maps are animations on pause), or fragments of code or spam; all of these are snippets, they are only momentary representations of ongoing processes – as indeed the New Aesthetic is intended to be. Each image is a link, hardcoded or imaginative, to other aspects of a far greater system, just as every web page and every essay, and every line of text written or quoted therein, is a link to other words, thoughts and ideas. Again, in this the New Aesthetic reproduces the structure and disposition of the network itself, as a form of critique.

Let’s look at some recent examples. Every satellite image posted is a meditation on the nature of mapping, that raises issues of perspective and power relationships, the privilege of the overhead view and the monopoly on technological agency which produces it. A photograph of Eric Schmidt wearing a flak jacket – as he does in his Twitter avatar – is a spur to investigate the circumstances of the photograph and the self-presentation of the corporation. It was taken on a visit to Iraq in 2009, when Google promised to digitise what remains of the National Museum’s collection, raising further questions about the digitisation and subsequent ownership of cultural patrimony, and of Google’s involvement in political activity and international diplomacy through its Google Ideas think-tank, which actively supports a programme of regime change in certain parts of the world. A photograph of the “Free Bradley Manning” contingent of the San Francisco pride parade in 2011 is an entrypoint to a consideration of intersectional politics, of the parallels between the political and the personal in an age when networks permit the sudden rupture of secure systems by individual conscious actions, when states can use such ruptures to justify ever greater clampdowns of freedom and transparency (both in the sense of information freedom, but also the ever-threatened right of the individual to remain opaque and illegible to the state), as well as the tendency of the media and popular protest to focus on the individuals (Manning, Assange, Snowden) and the technological front-ends to such disclosures (Wikileaks) rather than the deeper transfer networks, protocols, or even, god forbid, the actual substance of the information disclosed. A screenshot of a promotional video for the telepresence company Anybot which features a robot wearing a bow tie commanding a human employee to “work faster!” is in one frame a terrifying vision of labour futures, and an indictment of visions of automation that emerge from executive and engineering cultures which perceive the value extractable by technological innovation differently to the major currents of social advancement throughout the 20th Century. An Adobe-sponsored “prank” at a bus stop – 12 million views on Youtube – where a live artist inserts passersby into a digital advertisement speaks to our internalisation of surveillance culture and our corresponding expectations of the individualisation of technology, and its framing by corporations – where in the video are the passersby who felt shocked, violated or just plain creeped out by such an intervention? Are they edited out, or did they simply not exist, and if not, why the hell not? This individualisation effect is seen at every level of technology, from the dot which places each of us at the center of the digital map, up to the robot sensor networks which rely on a codified abstract of the world to guide them, rather than the truth on the ground: the map indeed becomes the territory. Powerpoint default styles which describe corporate visions are reproduced in the NSA prism slides and the US Army’s famous “death by powerpoint”, even as those corporate slides are infected by the absence of meaning best expressed in the war on abstract nouns. Endless views of protest, repression, revolt and schism are framed not through the lens of critique, but the lens of iPhones and iPads held aloft; photography, unable to see the network, photographs photography, but in the glitches and unicode characters of printed database commands and international shipping labels, an underlying structure is made visible, the horsemeat scandal of information systems. And so on and so forth; it’s not the writing that’s hard, it’s the thinking.

The New Aesthetic is not superficial, it is not concerned with beauty or surface texture. It is deeply engaged with the politics and politicisation of networked technology, and seeks to explore, catalogue, categorise, connect and interrogate these things. Where many seem to read only incoherence and illegibility, the New Aesthetic articulates the deep coherence and multiplicity of connections and influences of the network itself.

I believe that much of the weak commentary on the New Aesthetic is a direct result of a weak technological literacy in the arts, and the critical discourse that springs from it. It is also representative of a far wider critical and popular failure to engage fully with technology in its construction, operation and affect. Since at least the introduction of the VCR – perhaps the first truly domesticated computational object – it seems there has been a concerted, societal rejection of technical understanding, wherein the attitude that “I don’t understand this and therefore don’t like this and therefore I will not investigate this” is ascendant and lauded. This attitude manifests in the low-level Luddite response to almost every technical innovation; in the stigmatisation of geek culture and interests, academic and recreational; in the managerial culture of economic government – and in the elevation of sleek, black-box corporate-controlled objects, platforms and services, from the iPhone to the SUV, over open-source, hackable, comprehensible and shareable alternatives. This wilful anti-technicalism, which is a form of anti-intellectualism, mirrors the present cultural obsession with nostalgia, retro and vintage which was one of the spurs for the entire New Aesthetic project; it is boring, and we reject it.

But if we don’t move the debate to a deeper level, none of this will change. There is a justified and rising opposition to drone warfare (and in the last week, to issues around computational surveillance and intelligence), which may or may not produce lasting political change; but even if successful this will only change the images and objects employed, not the modes of thinking, coupled to technological mastery, which drive it. Without a concerted effort to raise the level of debate, we just loop over and over through the same fetishisations and reifications, while the real business of the world continues unexamined. Those who cannot understand technology are doomed to be consumed by it. (The idea that these ideas lack politics is especially laughable when you look at what’s happening in much of the art world, and most of the digital art world. A young, post-Iraq generation who have had all hope of political participation kettled out of them, and are then endlessly accused of apathy to boot. No wonder it’s all personal brands, car culture, glossy gifs and facebook performances.) Technology is political. Everything is political. If you cannot perceive the politics, the politics are being done to you.

I was recently asked if the New Aesthetic would coalesce into “something more serious”: a book, collection of essays, or a manifesto. While I would like to, and probably should, produce a book or book-like object at some point, it itself would not be “the New Aesthetic”, but a commentary upon some of the issues it raises. I strongly reject the notion that a manifesto is an appropriate or “more serious” (and thus worthy) way to address the issues under discussion here, as it would represent precisely the kind of premature codification of the subject that the New Aesthetic explicitly sets out to avoid. (While admitting, with respect to that statement, all the contradictions presented by this piece of writing: where the two accounts differ, trust the network and not this document.)

In part, this unwillingness to codify is a reproduction of the network’s own refusal to be pinned down, controlled, routed and channeled, which must be considered one of its core, inherent qualities. But it is also born of a sincere desire not to foreclose discussion: the New Aesthetic may be considered a work, a conversation, a performance, an experiment, and a number of other things (although, please, not a movement). This intention of keeping the field open was, and perhaps remains, naive. Nevertheless, I firmly believe it is the way it has to be. As such, the presentation of a so-called gaudy heap of images is an appeal to, and act of confidence in, the network itself, in the systems and people that comprise it, to follow their own ideas and intuitions, educate themselves and, outwith a hierarchical commentariat, come to their own conclusions. The onus is on the reader to explore further, just as and because the onus is on the individual in a truly networked politics. So why is it important to critique the critique as well? Because we live in a world shaped and defined by computation, and it is one of the jobs of the critic and the artist to draw attention to the world as it truly is.

“Selling the Stars - Craft Ebbing & Co.’s Strange Exhibition”
at Setagaya Literary Museum (Setagaya, Kawasaki area)
(2014-01-25 - 2014-03-30)

Made up of Hiromi Yoshida and Atsuhiro Yoshida, Craft Ebbing & Co. is a creative unit focusing upon writing and book design work. This exhibition presents the first opportunity to fully take stock of their wide ranging activities. [Related Event] A Strange Talk Show Part 1 Date: 9th February 14:30-16:00 Venue: 1F Literature Salon Capacity: 150 participants (reservation required) Admission: ￥500 A Strange Talk Show Part 2 Date: 22nd February 14:30-16:00 Venue: 1F Literature Salon Capacity: 150 participants (reservation required) Admission: ￥500 A Strange Talk Show Part 3 Date: 8th March 14:30-16:00 Venue: 1F Literature Salon Capacity: 150 participants (reservation required) Admission: ￥500 A Strange Talk Show Part 4 “The Book of Friday and the Books of the Future” Date: 29th March 14:30-16:00 Venue: 1F Literature Salon Capacity: 150 participants (reservation required) Admission: ￥500

Metal Art Museum Hikarinotani Permanent Exhibition
at Metal Art Museum Hikarinotani (Greater Tokyo area)

Our permanent exhibition, held on the first floor, features the work of metal-cast artists Hotsuma Katori and Shinobu Tsuda. Both being born in the same period, in the Hokuso area of Chiba Prefecture, the two were opposites in artistic viewpoints; Katori emphasized tradition while Tsuda called for revolution. Works on display will be rotated every three months.

We’d like to congratulate Ulrich Pakker for being selected to receive the UNESCO art award for "Inspiring Peace and Humanity Through Art and Science". Ulrich is also a premier gallery member of SeattleArtists.com.

"I am honored to be receiving this UNESCO art award from Dr. Sheree Wen, U.S. National Commissioner for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).  It has been a great year and this is certainly the crowning glory." says Ulrich Pakker.

If you’d like any more information on the UNESCO award or on what Ulrich has been working on lately, please visit http://www.RPArt.com.

South Korea's most prestigious film festival said Wednesday it has chosen Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang as its Asian Filmmaker of the Year.

The Pusan International Film Festival praised Tsai's work over the past three decades for pioneering unexplored areas that overcome the limitations of the art film industry.

"He is renowned for seeking fresh ways of communicating with his audience... We can find the root of his endless spirit of challenging himself and the borderlines of art in his earlier works in the 1990s."

via uncp.edu

Somewhere towards the beginning of Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, in the middle of a long and tedious sequence of military men addressing the party congress on matters of public policy, Goebbels, in a suit, rises to the microphone to speak about propaganda. “May the bright flame of our enthusiasm never be extinguished,” he says, looking somewhat more comfortable in front of the crowd then you might imagine. “It alone gives the creative art of modern political propaganda its light and warmth. From the depths of the people it rose aloft. And into the depths of the people in must descend… It may be good to have power based on arms, but it is better and more joyful to win and to keep the hearts of the people.” It’s a telling moment, especially in light of Riefensthal’s insistence, for the remainder of her life, that Triumph was not and is not a propaganda film, but instead a work of ‘total art’ or of ‘cinema verite.’ Technically speaking, she is correct, insofar as Hitler had chosen her precisely for her pedigree as an artist, and she only agreed to make the film when he promised to keep Goebbels and his minions at the ministry entirely out of its production.

And yet, watching the film today, it is clearly not only a piece of propaganda, but the apogee of the genre. By turns horrifying and deadly dull, it is wholly without irony or self-reflection of any sort. Quite literally a masterpiece, it is responsible for creating an entire arsenal of cinematic techniques later employed by everybody from Josef Stalin to Barack Obama. In effect then, the distinction, between art and propaganda, which mattered so much to Reifenstahl in the films production, has in some sense vanished. Art not only became propaganda but perfected it, the distance she fought to maintain damning her all the more for preserving the unique power of her vision. Triumph plays at Anthology this Saturday at 6 and 8:30, its worth seeing, if you haven’t before; even if the technical achievements no longer impress, the relentlessness of thing remains striking and, god willing, singular.

People tend to like Martin Creed. Although some derisory press comments were made when he won the Turner Prize in 2001 with an installation called The lights going on and off in which the lights did nothing but that in an empty room, there’s always been something playful about his output that warms as well as engages the viewer.

Artist Katie Grinnan incorporated student work into her art.

The article residency-leads-collaboration/">Residency leads to collaboration by Alexa Bricker appeared first on The Temple News.

Visit Philly is teaming up with the campaign With Art Philadelphia for a contest that calls for some creativity. The organization is utilizing social media by encouraging Instagram and Twitter users to take photos of Philadelphia art and apply the hashtag “#PhillyArtContest.” Caroline Bean, the director of social media at Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, helped make the new photo contest come alive.…

The article Philly art contest asks users to Instagram by Chelsea Finn appeared first on The Temple News.

The RAW Awards will showcase design talent in Philadelphia, with winners advancing to compete on a national level.

The article ‘RAW’ talent showcased in awards ceremony by Taylor Farnsworth appeared first on The Temple News.

“The 10th 1_Wall Competition, Graphics, Finalists “
at Guardian Garden (Ginza, Marunouchi area)
(2014-02-24 - 2014-03-20)

After a vigorous process of portfolio reviews and individual interviews, 6 finalists have been chosen for this year’s 1_Wall open call exhibition, including work dealing with the semiotics of celebrity, patterns of fashion and that embodying a particular physical presence. On 3/6(Thurs) the final jury session will take place in which audiences may observe presentations by the finalists and discover who will be this year’s grand prize winner. [Related Events] Final Jury Session Date: 3/6(Thurs) 18:00-20:30 Talk Show Date: 3/12(Wed) 19:30-21:00 Guests: Ichio Otsuka(illustrator, art director), Atsuki Kikuchi(art director), Jun Tsuzuki(illustrator, graphic designer) Portfolio Review Date: 3/19(Wed) 19:10-21:00 Reviewers: Hideki Kessoku(illustrator), Hidechika(graphic designer)

All About Eating
at Kawasaki City Museum (Setagaya, Kawasaki area)
(2014-01-11 - 2014-03-30)

This exhibition of food-related artwork from the museum’s collection is an opportunity to reconsider our culinary culture from the past through the present in a sincere, enjoyable, and straight-forward way. Venue: Art Gallery [Related Events] Curator’s Talks Dates: 1/18 (Sat), 2/1 (Sat), 2/15 (Sat) from 14:00 Free [Image: Ludwig Hohlwein “Restaurant Wilheim Mozer” (1909) Miura Collection]

Sensai Exhibition
at The Artcomplex Center of Tokyo (Ichigaya, Kagurazaka area)
(2014-04-01 - 2014-04-06)

A group exhibition from the 4 awards winners of last year’s Daisaimitsu Exhibition Yae, Makuboru, Tsubasa and Kaori Yamaguchi, inviting the viewer into the ever expanding depths of intricate creation.

Many of our book club authors have listed Middlemarch as among of their favorite and most influential novels, so for our March selection, the Lopate Show Book club is reading George Eliot’s masterpiece, which is often called the greatest English novel. It deals with the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, morality, and human aspiration and failure. Rebecca Mead joins us to talk about what makes the classic novel so great, and to discuss her book, My life in Middlemarch. Mixing biography, reporting, and memoir, Mead explores Middlemarch’s important place in her own life, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written.

Rebecca Mead will be here March 28 to talk about Middlemarch and My Life in Middlemarch, so read one—or both—and leave your questions for the author below!

Director Rachel Boynton talks about her documentary “Big Men,” which follows what happens when a Texas oil exploration firm makes an enormous discovery off the coast of Ghana. Called the Jubilee Field, the deposit discovered off of Ghana had the potential to return a staggering $2.2 billion to investors. “Big Men” opens March  14 at the IFC Center.

All major-league baseball players pass through the minor leagues in their career, and when they make it to the big leagues, they hope never to return to the minors. John Feinstein explores the colorful and mysterious world of Triple-A minor-league baseball, one step beneath Major League Baseball. In Where Nobody Knows Your Name Feinstein writes about the pitchers, position players, managers, and an umpire biding their time in the minors.

“I wanted to write about guys who struggle,” said Feinstein when he was explaining why he chose this topic to write about. "Guys in Triple-A are either on their way up or they've come back down. And some of them are treading water." He wrote about a player who was in the minor leagues for 16 years before he got called up to the majors, where he got one hit out of 22 at bats, and was sent back down to the minors.

He said that managing in Triple-A is the hardest job in baseball, because nobody wants to be there—not just players, but umpires, announcers, managers, everyone would rather be in the big leagues. Some get that chance, but many don't. "To get to Triple-A you have to be an elite baseball player." Feinstein said. "They’re amazingly good baseball players, they’re just not quite there."

A Ghanaian ex-pat tells us about her journey to discover how ordinary Africans are coping with the challenges they face every day – and the creative and innovative solutions she found. Dave Barry shares his take on parenting in his new book called You Can Date Boys When You’re 40. Benjamin Black discusses channeling Raymond Chandler for his latest novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, former special White House adviser on health care reform, talks about why it’s become such a divisive issue and how he thinks the ACA will improve health care.

Paul Graham,
Untitled (Smoking girl in orange light), 1996–98, from the series end of an age.
Chromogenic print, 179.5 x 133.7 cm.
Gift of Alison and Alan Schwartz, 2000. 2000/1348 © Paul Graham; courtesy Pace Gallery and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.

Click to play:

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Recorded: Oct. 17, 2013, at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 1:23:13

Paul Graham is a British photographer based in New York. Lauded as “a profound force for renewal of the deep photographic tradition of engagement with the world,” he was awarded the 2012 Hasselblad award for major achievements in photography.

In conjunction with the exhibition Light My Fire: Some Propositions about Portraits and Photography

Generously supported by Penny Rubinoff

Sara Angelucci,
Aviary (Male Passenger Pigeon/extinct),
2013.
© 2013 Sara Angelucci.
Courtesy of the artist.

Sara Angelucci,
Aviary (Female Passenger Pigeon/extinct),
2013.
© 2013 Sara Angelucci.
Courtesy of the artist.

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Download 125.3MB MP3

Recorded: Jan. 15, 2014, at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 01:31:16

Artist-in-residence Sara Angelucci; writer and historian Matthew Brower, Mark Peck, Royal Ontario Museum Ornithology Technician; and Bridget Stutchbury, author and Professor of Ornithology at York University, gathered to discuss the extinction and endangerment of North American birds as well as art and society’s relationship with the natural environment. The talk was moderated by the AGO’s curator of Canadian Art, Andrew Hunter.

The discussion was followed by a three-course meal served in FRANK restaurant, specially prepared by executive chef Jeff Dueck in consultation with Sara Angelucci. The main dish featured a vegetarian “pigeon-less” pie to mark the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon, formerly one of the most abundant birds in North America, was pushed to extinction in 1914 due to habitat destruction and over hunting. Dinner and dessert were each paired with a choice of white or red Ontario wine.

Speaker Bios

Sara Angelucci is a Toronto-based visual artist who works primarily with photography, video and audio, exploring vernacular archival materials such as home movies, snap-shots and vintage portraits and their limited ability to convey the exact sense of a lived experience. Working with these images Angelucci seeks to reposition them in the present, shedding light on their broader context and histories outside of the frame.

Matthew Brower is a lecturer in Museum Studies in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. He writes on issues in animal studies, the history and theory of photography and contemporary art. He is the Author of Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography (University of Minnesota Press 2010). He has curated exhibitions in historical and contemporary art including Mieke Bal: Nothing is Missing, Gord Peteran: Recent Works, The Brothel Without Walls, Suzy Lake: Political Poetics, and Collective Identity │Occupied Spaces.

Mark Peck is the Collection Manager in Ornithology, Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. He is also involved in museum exhibits and programs and field research in South America, New Jersey and the Hudson Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario. In addition, he is the coordinator of the Ontario Nest Records Scheme, the ROM liaison for the Ontario Bird Records Committee and the program director for the Toronto Ornithological Club. In his off hours he is an avid bird photographer, traveling extensively for both his profession and his hobby. He has authored or coauthored numerous scientific and popular articles on birds and hundreds of his images have been published in books, magazines and on websites. Mark has been with the ROM since 1983.

Bridget Stutchbury is a professor in the Department of Biology at York University, Toronto. She completed her M.Sc. at Queen’s University and her PhD at Yale and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. Since the 1980s, she has studied migratory songbirds to understand their behaviour, ecology and conservation. Her current research focuses on studying the incredible migration journeys of songbirds to help halt the severe declines in many species. She serves on the board of Wildlife Preservation Canada and is the author of Silence of the Songbirds (2007) and The Bird Detective (2010).

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Recorded: Jan. 8, 2014, at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario
Duration: 1:13:47

This talk features former artist-in-residence Sara Angelucci in conversation with artists Spring Hurlbut and Marla Hlady about their work, points of convergence and departure.

Sara Angelucci (born Hamilton, Ont.) is a Toronto-based visual artist who works primarily with photography, video and audio, exploring vernacular archival materials such as home movies, snap-shots and vintage portraits and their limited ability to convey the exact sense of a lived experience. Working with these images Angelucci seeks to reposition them in the present, shedding light on their broader context and histories outside of the frame.

Spring Hurlbut (born Toronto, Ont.) is a Toronto-based artist whose installations, sculptures and photography explore life, death and the human condition. Hurlbut, through her sculptures, which incorporate bone, egg shells, and claws, her photographs of human ash and her solemn monochrome portraits, encourages the acceptance of one’s own mortality and attempts to find the beauty in this inevitability.

Marla Hlady (born Edmonton, Alta.) lives and works in Toronto as a sound and kinetic sculpture artist, exploring ways of experiencing sound through spatial and social contexts. Hlady’s pieces deal with the nature of sound, often materializing it for viewers and reorienting their connection to everyday auditory experiences.

An extractor unit keeps Conservation manager Maria Sullivan safe from solvent vapours.

By Maria Sullivan, Manager of Conservation

In the AGO Conservation Department, we’re always concerned about the condition of the artwork… but of course we’re very careful about our own health and safety, too.

Visitors to our labs often wonder about the long contraptions that resemble elephant trunks dangling from the ceiling. We do often call them trunks, but they are, in fact, extraction units that we use when working with small amounts of solvents. When the units are on, the trunks suck air away from the working area so that the conservator isn’t exposed to the solvent vapours. We always consult our material safety data sheets (MSDSs) to understand the materials we’re using and what protective measures are needed. We also try to use less toxic materials whenever possible.

Recently, we were extremely fortunate to host a highly distinguished visitor who’s an expert in this area: Monona Rossol. Monana is a chemist, artist and industrial hygienist who has spent a lifetime advocating for safety in the arts, and she is president and founder of Art, Crafts & Theater Safety (ACTS), a non-profit dedicated to providing health and safety services to the arts. Her expertise is also relevant to artists, who use some of the same substances in their work (see tips below).

Monona investigates items in the AGO’s Conservation Department.

Monona presented a workshop for staff members from the AGO and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) on Safety in Art Conservation and Museum Practice. The workshop addressed issues such as working intelligently and safely with chemicals and disaster planning. The AGO partnered with the ROM, OCAD University and the University of Toronto to bring Monona to Toronto for a series of educational events on safety in the arts.

While we are always careful in our practice at the AGO, it’s always good to have a reminder of the potential hazards and to consider measures we might take to improve our practice further.

Monona addresses the workshop attendees.

Monona’s tips for conservators and artists:

• Follow WHMIS (workplace hazardous materials information system) and have handy the old MSDSs or the new safety data sheets on all chemicals. This includes items such as solders, welding rods and wood products.
• Make sure you’ve been trained to understand the safety information. This includes Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs), Threshold Limit Values (TLVs), evaporation rates, flash points and other technical data.
• Make sure all chemicals have labels that identify the substance and its hazards and that can be understood by everyone — not just you and your lab/studiomates.
• Store incompatible chemicals separately. Solvents, acids, alkalis, organic peroxides and oxidizers must each have separate special storage units. And some chemicals must be stored completely alone because they react with almost everything. These include nitric acid and glacial acetic acid.
• Read, learn and research for safer chemicals and procedures to replace the more hazardous ones you use.
• Check your local exhaust ventilation systems. You can use smoke from a stick of incense, tiny bubbles from children’s bubble-making toys, a bit of talcum powder or any visible substance that will suspend in the air long enough for you to watch it move. If it is not moving steadily away from you as you work, adjustments or repairs must be made.
• Wear the right protective gear. Not all gloves are barriers against all chemicals. Not all respirators work for all air contaminants. Each type of protective eyewear is designed for a specific limited purpose. Consult with safety people and manufacturers until you are sure you have the right gear for the job.
• Err on the side of caution. Most lab and studio accidents occur in ways that were not anticipated. Think through your procedures keeping in mind that Murphy was an optimist. Most of your chemicals have never been tested for long term-effects such as reproductive damage or cancer. Don’t be the lab rat.

Curious about Conservation?
If you have a burning question about Conservation, leave a comment below. We’ll do our best to give you an answer in an upcoming Conservation Notes post.

Signature Partner of the AGO’s Conservation Program

1. Start with a bale of Straw.

2. Saturate it with water for about 3 days.

3. Sprinkle the top of the bale with 1/2 cup granular nitrogen fertilizer and continue watering, adding 1/2 cup fertilizer for the next 3 days. Then for the next 3 days only add 1/4 cup fertilizer and water.

4. On day 10, begin digging 3 holes in the the top of the bale, a little larger than the plant pot diameter. Then fill the holes with potting soil or compost, or a combination, and water gently.

Be sure to dig your holes slightly larger than the plant pot diameter

5. When the soil is no longer hot to the touch, plant and water gently. Clean gallon milk jugs with their bottoms removed make a good cloche if the temperature drops suddenly!

6. Continue watering gently and occasionally add dilute fertilizer or compost tea about once per week. The continued watering will leach the fertilizer out.

Advantages to Straw Bale Gardening

• Easier (raised) for folks with limited mobility
• Useful if your garden soil is poor
• Useful if you have little or no soil in which to garden
• Virtually no weeding (Don’t use hay bales!)
• Don’t have to rotate crops, use a fresh bale each year
• At season’s end, provides great compost for rest of garden

Possible Disadvantages to Straw Bale Gardening

• May look a little messy as the bale decomposes
• Bales dry out quickly, so ultimately may use too much water…jury is still out on this one