Screengrab AFC

Art Fag City announces the launch of a new initiative today; tracking artists who appear on the Colbert Report. The second artist investigating the mechanisms of government agencies to appear on the show within the space of a month, Hasan Elahi spoke with Steven Colbert about his website Tracking Transience. The site (or Elahi - we’re not sure which) sends the government daily pictures of his whereabouts, what he’s eating, and even how he’s spending his money to ensure that officials don’t mistake him as a terrorist. A response to being detained by the FBI for suspicion of hoarding explosives in 2002, Elahi explains, “Intelligent forces no matter where they are all operate in a community where their commodity is information, and the reason that information has value is because no one else has access to that information…so the secrecy of that information is what makes it valuable…so by me disclosing all this information [it becomes worthless]”

Of course, the other reason the information he provides has so little meaning is that the site is full of pop up windows and scrolling images making it impossible to navigate. But whatever. Elahi tells Steven Colbert he’s seen a EOP.gov address in his sitemeter, which means he’s had the eyes of the President on his site. “You’ve got a fan!” replies Colbert, which immediately prompted the web professional in me to wonder about the duration of his visit.

Hasan Elahi’s work is currently on view at Artist’s Space in the exhibition The New Normal.

The Art Fag City franchise expands, and I haven’t lifted a finger.  I find particular pleasure in the sign indicating a five dollar fine for whining; Do observe this rule — we will be enforcing it!  Special Thanks to Ms. Jen Bekman for forwarding us this photo.

Meanwhile, in my ongoing efforts to include artist Wafaa Bilal in EVERY POST I WRITE,  a new blog has been started to collect letters in support of Bilal, and his wrongful censorship.  I recommend reading the notes people have sent in, because there are plenty of details you won’t find anywhere else (ie, Troy’s Mayor Tutunjian is an artist), and of course you should send a letter yourself.  There’s no reason this man’s art should have closed down two exhibition spaces.

For background and previous posts mentioning the case click here, here, and here.

Even when art calls the censorship police to action, I’ve rarely found that the work itself seemed to be the underlying issue. Most of the time, it’s the same boring conversation: elitist artist shits on conservative values. In the case of Wafaa Bilal, who recently had his projected video game, Virtual Jihadi, removed from an exhibit last Thursday at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the “elitist artist” label has not been tabled, but we’re still looking at the same power struggles. Convincing a censor to listen, when their position is essentially, “your right to speak is granted, as long as long as it’s consistent with the norms of the institution” can feel like an impossible task.

Indeed it may well be since the inherent problem with censorship of any kind lies in the fact that one person refuses to participate. Such positions can be infuriating, particularly in regards to art like Bilal’s because it means to continue a conversation already occurring. To wit, the work in question comes with a hacking history three generations long beginning as a downloadable video game which asked its players to kill indistinguishable Iraqis while hunting their leader (Saddam Hussein), then mutating into the al-Qaeda version, which replaces the Iraqis with identical Americans, their leader President Bush. Bilal transformed the latter, and created a character based on himself: a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago who loses his father and brother to the war in Iraq. The player becomes an al-Qaeda recruit and hunts Bush.

Even if the game ran with a crawler underneath explaining that it proposes a questionable action in order to point out the possible consequences of our own morally depraved behavior, it’s unlikely to have phased many young republicans and bloggers like Ken Girardin. Says the co-editor of The College Republican blog, (which seems to be down: too much traffic?), “The message he’s putting forth marginalizes the seriousness of the threat of Islamic terrorism.” The FBI similarly thought this was a matter of national concern, which is why the exhibition is suspended.

Such actions make you wonder if the days when artists in this country were labeled communists but allowed to speak as means of demonstrating the moral fortitude of the country have been forgotten. It would seem we’ve lost a lot of ground since then.

Related: Newsgrist Jihadi run down

Artcal Zine

Game Politics

We Make Money Not Art

Double Triple, Art Fag City’s favorite design group teams up with artist Ryan Junell to bring you this great Obama advertisement asking registered Californians to vote this Tuesday. I’m a fan. Full disclosure: Jason Corace, a member Double Triple, is also my roommate.

For those who have been following the news of proposed oil development plans in Utah that may effect Robert Smithson’s monumental earthwork Spiral Jetty, tells us the state governor’s office has extended their comment period to February 13. Information on the project and how to comment can be found here and here.

In the meantime, an interesting series of comments on my initial post bring into question whether Smithson would have wished his work preserved at all. Mr. Bitterman probably best sums up these concerns in the reposted comment below;

Smithson was not an environmentalist by any stretch of the imagination, nor did he believe there was any such thing as “Nature” - as something separate and distinct from human endeavor…Ironically, 50 years ago, Smithson was not only inspired but strengthened in his resolve by the wreckage and debris that once greeted the visitor to the site of Spiral Jetty, the wreckage and debris of a failed oil drilling operation of the mid-20th century. In his eyes, these things, this industrial junk (now removed - sanitized in the last few years by the DIA Fdn in the interest of stopping time for profit) was of the highest aesthetic value, a motivating factor in his placement of the work.

The cult of preciousness, the very thing Smithson held in contempt throughout his career, has finally caught up with him; the meaning of the work has finally been separated from the work itself; entropy has finally been defeated.

Nancy Holt is wrong. And if Robert Smithson himself were to rise from the dead and rail against the oil industry I would call him a liar and a fake.

I have been to Spiral Jetty, and as excellent as that experience was, it wasn’t the jetty that set me free, it was the intention, faint but still sensible, like the sound of the sea in a shell.

Mr. Bitterman makes some good points regarding Smithson’s contempt for preciousness, though it should be noted that no evidence is provided to support the claim that the DIA Foundation has sanitized Spiral Jetty solely for profit, since the conservation of historically important landmarks often has more purpose than any economic payoff that might occur. As for whether Smithson would have liked oil drilling developments destroying his work, it would seem there is some evidence to support that notion. However, the very essay I’ve linked to also points out that in 1981 Robert Hobbs observed Smithson was in fact, unwilling to let weathering and the rising waters take over, and had intended to raise the earthwork by 15 feet. Writer Angelika Pagel additionally identifies the irony in a work of impermanence now forever archived in photography, film and print, though this latter point may not be particularly important in regards to the considering the conservation of the work.

Personally, I’d prefer to allow Smithson at least some artistic ego in his grave. After all, the humanizing forces of pride ensure an artist never becomes a slave their own ideology.

UPDATE: Also from the comments on the intitial post, Foreman says,

Smithson’s entropy theory has become a favorite argument among nature haters and greedy prophets of The Latter Days. His desperate irony should not be considered as a license to destroy. Smithson actually wanted his work to exist physically as long as possible:

“There’s a word called entropy. . . . It’s like the Spiral Jetty is physical enough to be able to withstand all these climate changes, yet it’s intimately involed with those climate changes and natural disturbances. That’s why I’m not really interested in conceptual art because that seems to avoid physical mass. You’re left mainly with an idea. Somehow to have something physical that generates ideas is more interesting to me than just an idea that might generate something physical.”

R. Smithson, Salt Lake City, 1972
Interview with Gianni Pettena
Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Jack Flam, ed. (U. of California Press, 1996), 298-99

UPDATE: Mr. Bitterman responds in the comments below

Allow me to clarify regarding the DIA Fdn.
What once began as an agency of change, a foundation dedicated to artists engaged in projects and strategies that defied commodity status or simply fell outside the boundaries of prevailing market structures, has now achieved its own antithesis as a commodities broker specializing in the reconstitution, reclassification and preservation of trans-historical artifacts.
DIA’s reversal of mission was concomitant with its reversal of fortune in the mid-90’s when the foundation was commandeered by entrepreneur Lenny Riggio. One need only visit DIA Beacon, a veritable Disneyland of 60’s and 70’s art, much of it recreated and frozen in time, to appreciate the fact that the market never sleeps, and the dreamer only dreams.
While Spiral Jetty will never post returns to anyone’s bottom line, its careful administration (preservation) affords DIA something better than money - profile. (A similar situation exists in the current plans to restore Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and regulate visitation.) And profile, in Lenny’s world anyway, is the best and cheapest kind of advertising. And if that means stopping time, and subverting provenance, then so be it. It’s worth it, as long as it’s worth it.

When I first moved into the loft I live in now, the electrical lines weren’t installed properly, the front door had no functioning lock, the building wasn’t phone or cable ready, the gas lines didn’t work, and the downstairs of my loft was still a pile of rubble. The city knew the building was unsafe to live in — it had no certificate of occupancy — yet no one was forced to leave because they were also aware that roughly 200 people would not have homes. In fact, in 2002, we took our landlords to court for illegally charging us rent on a space without having the permit to do so.

Given this, why is the Department of Buildings so intent on evacuating the artists and tenants of 475 Kent Ave from a building they have lived in for years? According to various news reports grain, now sarcastically labeled “explosive” by the Internerds, stored by a Matzo bakery on the ground floor was the main issue. However, no amount of reasonable problem solving in regards to this “issue” seems to be able to derail the permanent removal of these people from their homes. Other violations cited by the DOB such as blocked exits, cracked windows, and unauthorized alterations are suddenly grounds for closing the building up.

I’ve posted the letter from the 475 Tenants (link via Jon), association below, along with a link to mayor Bloomberg’s contact form so those who similarly believe this to be an injustice can express their support. I have also posted Painter Mira Schor’s letter as an example. The thread generated on this blog, as well as the post, will be directed to Mike Bloomberg. At the end of the day, the building is scheduled to be locked up until it is brought up to code.

JANUARY 24, 2008
PRESS RELEASE:
FROM: 475 Kent Tenants Association

MATZO-GATE

NEW YORK CITY’S ARTISTIC COMMUNITY UNDER ATTACK

The live-work building located at 475 Kent Ave in Brooklyn’s coveted waterfront neighborhood of Williamsburg was issued a Vacate Order by the NYC Fire Department on Sunday, January 20th at 7:30PM, the day before Martin Luther King day. Tenants were given until 1:30 in the morning to leave the building on a frigid January night.

475 Kent is a microcosm of New York City’s cultural and economic activity with creative professionals generating an estimated $15 million in annual revenue. The vibrant community of 200 working artists - photographers, architects, writers, musicians, sculptors, filmmakers, designers, painters, printmakers, etc. is under attack.

It seems that the D.O B. is intent on making sure people will never be able to return to their spaces until all repairs are made and the building has a residential C of O, a prospect that could take years and millions of dollars. This renders 200 inhabitants most of whom are self-employed, small business entrepreneurs, both homeless and out of work. This building has been consistently and viably supporting creative professionals lives and businesses for ten years. The illegal eviction at 475 Kent comes on the heels of the evacuation of 17-17 Troutman in Ridgewood. That people’s livelihoods and homes are being put in complete jeopardy makes one wonder if this is a trend and begs the phrase “follow the money”.

The events on Sunday night were precipitated when the FDNY inspected the basement of 475 Kent Ave. and “discovered” two 10′ diameter metal canisters containing grain used for making Matzo. The Matzo bakery has been in the building for more than ten years. The DOB and fire department have inspected 475 Kent Avenue regularly for the past ten years and would have had to be blind if they were not fully aware of the existence of a Matzo bakery and the grain. The presence of the grain resulted in a so-called “hazardous emergency” situation that gave FDNY and DOB license to vacate the building. When some residents and the landlord offered to alleviate the problem and remove the grain from the building on Sunday night the FDNY replied “you are not qualified to move the grain”. They then issued the vacate order.

What ensued was unmitigated chaos under the direction of our friends at the OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANGEMENT starring the New York City Fire Department, Department of Buildings, NYPD, Health Department, Department of Agriculture and the Red Cross. Their only area of competence was at holding closed-door, inter-agency meetings, in which no tenant representative was allowed, every two hours in their brand new location trailer. How many City agencies does it take to unscrew a lightbulb? We’ll let you know, we’re still counting.

Upon the issue of the vacate order 200 people scrambled to rid 110 spaces of their most crucial belongings. The following day people were given 6 hours access to remove their belongings, tools and equipment, a scenario that for most people who had been in residence for 5 - 10 years with substantial equipment and installations was completely untenable. From there the scene snowballed. On Tuesday January 22, tenants arrived with moving trucks at 10am having been told they would have another 6 hours access to the building. They found all entrances blocked by NYPD and FDNY and no one was allowed upstairs. Finally, at 1pm the leaders of each agency stood on the staircase and delivered their plan to the crowd:

- residents would be allowed into the building six people at a time for one hour, followed by another group of six people each being granted one hour.

Do the math.

No, we’ll do it for you. 200/6= 33.3 hours it would take to allow each person ONE hour access to collect their stuff. Then they shut down the elevators, insuring that the task was impossible. People, in a panic that this would be their last chance to save their belongings, began to carry equipment and valuables down ten flights of stairs, creating a real hazard.

As of Wednesday, January 23, the grain has been removed from the basement of 475 Kent Avenue, alleviating the immediate “hazardous” condition. Now the tenants have been allowed a final four days, six hours a day, to access the building. On Sunday night, January 27, the building will be padlocked prohibiting all further access for the foreseeable future. Why the building is safe enough to access for four days, but suddenly deemed unsafe again on Monday is a mystery to which DOB, OEM, FDNY has not provided an answer. Although requested repeatedly the DOB has never provided a complete list of the violations on the building. We know one of these violations is an inoperable sprinkler system, a problem that can mitigated with the presence of fire-guards while the system is repaired, allowing continued occupancy of the building.

Since the 1960’s New York City’s tacit urban renewal policy has been reliant on artist’s moving into derelict buildings in less desirable neighborhoods. The city does nothing to bolster or support economic activity in these down and out areas, nor do they do anything to create affordable, legal, usable space for live/work entrepreneurs. 475 Kent is a prime example of this kind of turn-a-blind-eye urban renewal that has been a boon to the City of New York. A decade ago South Williamsburg was a dangerous neighborhood. Once artists take the initiative to live on the edge and restore and renew unused real estate in what were marginal areas the City becomes predatory. The transformation of Williamsburg by the artist community into one of New York City’s most desirable neighborhoods encourages the city to move artists out as they calculate the tax revenue of luxury condo developers moving in. No one in any city agency cared about our health and safety ten years ago. Now that our building has become hot property the City is ready to muster all the powers of its many agencies to assist in the muscling of the property from the owners and the tenants. The tenants of 475 Kent Avenue call into question the hypocritical policies being put forth by the agencies of the City of New York. We cannot help but wonder what forces are driving this vacate and why the agencies are suddenly so concerned for out health and safety.

475 Kent Tenant’s Association

A letter from Mira Schor, (this letter is meant to be used a template, so feel free to appropriate it for your own):

I would like to express my support for the tenants of 475 Kent Street. I urge you to support them too in their efforts to return to their homes while any repairs needed are done to their building. They have been summarily evicted on false premises that favor their landlord and the conversion of the building into luxury housing. New York is a great city because of the kind of creative professionals who have lived in a supportive, socially integrated real community in this building: photographers, architects, writers, musicians, sculptors, filmmakers, designers, painters, printmakers, self-employed, small business entrepreneurs. New York needs such people and you need to support their being able to live where they have lived productively contributing to the soul of this city.

I hope you will do everything you can to help these New Yorkers return to their homes as soon as possible and I hope you will do everything you can to protect the rights of artists and creative professionals to remain in homes threatened by ruthless real-estate developers.

Sincerely,

Combined screencapture from the Tom Ford For Men website

Short of a slightly different type design, the above image represents what you’ll see in the latest issue of ArtForum. I understand the magazine needs to make money, but I don’t think it’s asking too much to set a few standards in regards to the type of advertising they allow to go to print. For example, they might think to refuse the woman taking the inflatable sex doll pose. There’s more than one way to sell Men’s perfume, and it doesn’t have to involve the sexualization of women.

Update: For those readers interested in finding the ad, it’s placed along side John Water’s top ten list, which makes it appear ironic. In fact, it was my interest in solving this question that lead me to the website — if you think the promotion in the magazine is bad, the website flash intro closes on an image far worse — I took the time to make a screengrab of that as well.

Image copyright Tom Ford

iCommons an organization seeking to promote and encourage access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing, and free culture communities around the world hosts a fund raising auction that starts today. From their website:

The iCommons Auction runs from 19 November to 14 December, 2007. This is an innovative auction of paraphernalia from some of the world’s leading Internet figures. From Internet activist and Stanford Law Professor, Lawrence Lessig’s coat that he wore in countries around the world that invited him to talk about free culture; to pre-prints from best-selling novelist, Cory Doctorow’s forthcoming, to-be-Creative Commons-licensed novel, Little Brother; and from #13 of only 20 plush toys of Firefox Japan’s mascot, Fox-keh that took the world by storm, to four of Indian intellectual property expert Lawrence Liang’s favorite Bollywood films: this auction is a celebration of free culture from around the world from those who make it and build it every day. All the proceeds of the auction will go to developing and sustaining iCommons’ global projects.

First items up on the block include Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture Coat, A First Life Survival Kit for a Second Life Fan, and Firefox’s Foxkeh.

Screengrab AFC

Two weeks ago I observed that the New Yorker Conference about “new ideas, forward thinking and eye-opening innovation” slated only 3 women of 24 invited panelists to participate. I don’t think this fairly represents the work women are doing in the field, so I sent a link to the post I wrote to their press office representative Sonya McNair. I received radio silence in return. Deciding that I probably wasn’t going to hear from McNair via email, I left a message on her machine telling her that I hoped to discuss the matter further with her, as an equal representation of women at such conferences remains very important to those working within creative fields. Later the next day McNair left the following message for me.

Hello Paddy, This is Sonya McNair With the New Yorker Press Office

Thank you for your call and certainly for your interest and while we appreciate and share your enthusiasm as this really is an important subject, we do not discuss our editorial decision making process. So I certainly appreciate and share your enthusiasm as we find it very important to us as well. So I thank you again and have a great day.

Let me make this much clear: I don’t appreciate having my words misrepresented. Enthusiasm implies that I am excited about the fact that the conference lacks women panelists, and I’m not. What’s more, why should I believe that “this important subject” has any weight to the New Yorker, when the response I’ve been given indicates the opposite. Since the time of my writing about this conference, 9 male panelists have been added to their website list, and no women. It’s time we started calling people out on this. A List of Women for Your Conference exists. It’s time the New Yorker started using it.

Related: The Tokion Conference 2006: 40 male participants, 5 female participants

Screengrab AFC

Why aren’t people bored with making old news? Running May 6th-7th, The New Yorker Conference describes itself as a “dynamic conference…of new ideas, forward thinking and eye-opening innovation,” currently defining these words with a list of 24 speakers only 3 of which are women. I don’t believe that women contribute only 12.5 of “forward thinking” ideas, and I doubt The New Yorker shares this sentiment either, but their current list of panelists certainly suggests this.

Having spent some time myself as a curator, and on various review boards, I can tell you that almost without thinking about it, you can find ways to account for the poor representation of women. For example, I commonly hear, “we invited an almost equal proportion of men and women to this conference,” a line that quells the worries of many when faced with depressing statistics. However, anyone who has been on a selection panel knows that the names you start with are rarely the same as the ones you end up with, so unless conference organizers make equal gender representation a priority it’s simply not going to happen.

I say this not because I believe there are less talented women than men working today, but because as individuals we have to work with the awareness that our inherent cultural biases lead us to trumpet male performance over that of females. I’m not going to bother providing lists of statistics we’re all aware of, particularly since this sort of thing leads to comments like “your assertions maybe correct, but you’ll need real evidence to support it not just a headcount.” but I will cite the following example to support this statement: Personism’s List of Women Speakers for Your Conferences, has been linked to on several occasions by Internet celebrities such as Kottke.org, and the Design Observer, in addition to heavy weights such as We Make Money Not Art, Modern Art Notes, Design Sponge, blogher, and yet, despite all this coverage, The New Yorker conference planners either didn’t know about it, or didn’t use it. Now, granted, CNN has not yet linked to the post, but it would seem to be me that largest indicators that these biases exist, reveal themselves when the resources available to correct the problem don’t remain in our consciousness long enough for them to be used. The New Yorker has some time to fix this problem - let’s make sure they do it.

Related:
The Tokion Conference Gender Debate (outgoing links to all key players within this post)
CBC News: Where are all the women writers? “When it comes to the magazine business, why is Harper’s so bizarre about women writers?”
The Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art now has a blog.

Brian Kennon and Bobbi Woods at 2nd Cannons Publications land the subject of yet another post here at AFC, releasing my new favorite journal, Leisure: An ArtJournal: Issue # 0, a questionaire. In this series, Kennon and Woods ask artists, writers and gallerists to discuss radness and artistic production. The questions are as unexpected as many of the answers, and the work once again takes on the alluring 2nd Cannons Publications trademark look. Typically characterized by a hip image made more “fun” through graphic design and text, the publishing house does an excellent job of creating books that are carefully curated and frighteningly clever. Of course, you can feel free to take all of this with a Paddy Johnson grain of salt, as I am one of the contributors to the first issue. 2nd Cannons published a number of the responses from artists like AA Bronson and Michael Smith on their site, but if you want to read what I have to say on the subject of radness, Wegman, and other pressing issues, for once you’ll have to pay for it. It’s counterintuitive I know, but look at it this way: You need a book with a skateboarder on it to round out your collection.

Favorite Q&A
Q: What is your name? Automatron@earthlink.net
Q: Radicality or total radness? Bitchin’
Q: How does radness fit into your practice? PRAC-rad-ICE-ness
Q: What is wrong with Entertainment? What is wrong with you?
Q: Have you ever personally seen a mystic truth? Coincidence
Q:Total deconstruction or total destruction? Fuck You
Q: Avant-garde or Avant grad? Gradually avante
Q: Name the funniest piece of art ever created. Ok…”I just farted”, mixed media, 2006
Q: William Wegman: Great artist? Or the greatest artist? I love dogs. Who doesn’t love dogs?

Participants are: Evan Holloway, Bruce Hainley, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Smith, Bruce LaBruce, Darren Bader, Mayo Thompson, AA Bronson, Jess Holzworth, Corrina Peipon, Brian Bress, Julie Lequin, Meg Cranston, Natascha Sofia Snellman, Monique Prieto, TRUDI, Drew Heitzler, Elk, Christopher Russell, Tom Allen, Catherine Taft, Betty Tompkins, Kathe Burkhart, Michael Ned Holte, Paddy Johnson, Ami Tallman, Daniel Hug, and lastly, Jason Meadows (whose answers we found insulting).