Lucky seven

Bonne Année

Wishing you all a joyful 2007

katz and beauty via phheww

Select a truism • improve or replace the truism

please change beliefs

please change beliefs is Jenny Holzer's first project on the world wide web, and is developed in the same spirit as her previous experiments in the public sphere. addressing the web as a site,

please • change • beliefs

Marilyn • Engaging Technology: A History and Future of Intermedia' on view

Marilyn, Alan Roth

Could it be that the central problem of the next ten years or so, for all artists in all possible forms, is going to be less the still further discovery of new media and intermedia, but of the new discovery of ways to use what we care about both appropriately and explicitly?

Dick Higgins
Statement on Intermedia
New York
August 3, 1966

Engaging Technology: A History and Future of Intermedia, the current exhibition at The Ball State Museum of Art, is a rich collection of inviting and interactive works that will show how technology-based art emerged in the 1960s and how it will progress into the future.
"As you trace the history of intermedia art, the works become more and more interactive," said John Fillwalk, associate professor of Electronic Art at Ball State. "The term intermedia is still being defined, allowing for a diverse interpretation. I looked for works that are inviting, humorous and that engage people at every level."
Artworks will engage visitors in different ways. For example, Adam Brown and Andrew Fagg's "Bion" will hang overhead in the museum's sculpture court and will react to the presence of people passing through the area.
In the gallery, an interactive timeline will introduce the concept of intermedia art followed by more interactive works, such as Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman's "Messa di Voce" and Alan Rath's "Marilyn" and "Mini Watcher II."
Jenny Holzer's "Truisms" and Gary Hill's "Soundings" will be displayed to illustrate how artful experimentation with video has evolved.
The exhibition is free and open to the public. It closes March 11.

via wmmna

Fear Itself • Yea Right

Ivan Martinez, Fear Iself... Yea Right, Custom Action Script, Animation & Projector, 2006
The one in the middle reads: "WOW! How much did this cost? Looks nice, can me and a couple hundred of my homeless friends live in it?"

Fear Itself, by Miami based Ivan Martinez, is a street art projection using custom action script in which he "runs scared" through the streets typing in his fears which are then projected on building facades. The works combines concepts on the running tiger of Karolina Sobecka´s Wildlife, previoulsly mentioned here and Paul Notzold´s "What/Who Are You Afraid Of?", described here.
According to Wooster Ivan started in August doing guerrilla projections of images on the new building developments that are appearing in and around downtown Miami.

He continued to do them until one night he and his friends were pulled over by the Miami police with their guns pointed inches from their head through the driver and passenger side windows. After two hours of being called anarchists and that what they were doing was "not art" and just "fucking around" he decided to stop doing the projections to work on other projects.

You can watch a seven minute video of some of the best scenes and phrases from the projections by clicking here.

via eyeteeth

it was about time

Pinups For Pups

Dedicated to helping the 4 to 6 million homeless animals that are killed each year, Pinups for Pups was established in 2005. An independent association of animal rescuers, Pinup models, and photographers, managed by and for its members, the mission of Pinups for Pups is to promote responsible pet ownership and to advance the practice of both animal rescue and spaying & neutering to control animal populations.

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for no specific reason

Kassandra, My lovely Mickey
Irving Penn (a repost)

you know, as a Katz....

Freedom In Peril

Freedom in Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century., is a controversial, leaked graphic novel that first appeared last friday at wonkette and has since then been widely blogged. It was called a hoax over the weekend, but further analysis of the source material appears to confirm that the purported NRA publication, which contains alarming racial overtones, is legitimate.
This artfully drawn bit of propaganda hits every hysterical high note of the radical right.Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century. is rightwing fear mongering at its finest (Paul Schmelzer) and as such worth to see in it´s full screaming beauty.

Download the complete nightmarish thing (as pdf) here

More at Eyeteeth, RawStory, boingboing

Good Boy

Carole Monterrain, Good Boy 2005
Résine, feutrine, 83 x 93 x 95 cm

Trees at Tate

Catherine Yass, Christmas Tree, 2000

Shirazeh Houshiary, Christmas Tree, 1993

Sarah Lucas, Cherubim/Allegory of Love 2006

Every year since 1988 Tate has commissioned a leading contemporary artist to design its Christmas Tree. The tree is situated in the Rotunda at Tate Britain. From 1991 the commissioned artist has also created the Director's Christmas Card. This section of Tate´s website traces the history of the Christmas Tree and documents the associated objects, cards as well as the press and public reaction to the work.
Tate Britain has commissioned Sarah Lucas to create its Christmas tree for 2006, which will be on display from 8 December 2006.
The tree is decorated with sculptures that take the form of baby angels made from wire and stretched tights. This chorus of fairies refers to figures from the classics such as Cupid, Eros, and Venus, which descending from above are multiplied over the tree. Lucas questions the erotic overtones often associated with these mythical figures through her decorations' matter-of-fact material quality and their function as ornaments.

more here, previous trees here

via via

Happy Xmas

from Team DL & your placeboKatz

pics from square america

Put your penguin clothes on

Penguins and pullovers are a fitting combo, as beautiful as placebo and Katz. While you surely agree on such statement you may still be puzzled why a penguin should wear a sweater. As Pablo Gazpachot kindly explains: "Ocean oil spills are one of the ugliest tricks us humans are capable of, especially when your consider the collateral damage to innocent lives. The toxic mess wreaks havoc on the entire ecosystem, often killing and injuring countless thousands of sea dependent creatures. In particular, Phillip Island Penguins, aka Little Penguins, who live along the coastal waters of Australia, get it bad. Their breeding grounds are typically lost in the spills, thus causing them to spread out, not mate, and loose precious group body heat. Oil gets all over their shiny feathers destroying the natural oils that keep them warm. They try to preen the sticky crude oil from their feathers, swallowing much of it, which is fatal.

So, how do you stop a penguin from freezing and eating toxic oil? You knit little sweaters for Little Penguins to wear while they are in Penguin Hospital of course. Little Penguins are the smallest of the penguin family, and they take a size extra small: about four inches across and nine inches tall with appropriate openings for the head and flippers. See here and here.

But before you start feeling too jolly about saving the planet, there's a twist to this wooly yarn. Unfortunately, it seems there are more lonely penguin sweater knitters than there are oil-covered penguins in the world. Thousands of tiny sweaters are sent to trouble spots each year with nary a penguin to don them. No matter, these places are stockpiling penguin "jumpers" for any future oil spills."

While we are assured by now that there´s a warm little jumper for every little penguin to jump in there´s still something missing. Yip, what about shoes? Wouldn´t it be strange to see all the fluffy dressed penguins walking along the streets barefoot?



Again, help is at hand, as this pic of "Elvis" shows. 'Elvis,' a blue penguin gets his new shoes checked from Penguin minder Bob Morgan at the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. The innovative shoe has been designed to fit over the feet of Little Blue penguins to keep them dry and free from infection after suffering problems when they moved to a new exhibit.

As you see, there´s good hope that every little penguin will always be a well dressed little penguin.

Time to dedicate your knitting efforts to other beings in need.
What about our floral friends?

pullover via gazpachot
shoes via petistic

Kirei (Beautiful!)

click for clip (youtube)

Aka(Red), Midori(Green), Ao(Blue), Gunzyouiro(Ultramarine)…Kirei(Beautiful!)

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Nocturne • Bill Henson

Lauded for his independence, Henson’s intensely emotive portraiture challenges the concept-driven focus dominating contemporary photography. His work has been celebrated by critics for embodying the formal elements of painting and cinematography. Henson’s haunting images of androgynous adolescence adrift in nocturnal wilderness inhabit a state of primal hypnotic tension.
EGO magazine

A huge collection of his work here
An interview with Bill Henson by Dominic Sidhu here

Pagoda balancing on a hair

Kyaik-htiyo which means "pagoda upon an hermit's head" is the name of an extraordinary pagoda in Myanmar, which is said to have been built 2,400 years ago. The pagoda rests on top of a large rock, which has been completely gilded in gold, and which in turn balances precariously on the edge of a much larger rock. I missed this miracle from Myanmar when Tinselman pointed to it back in april:
You should know about this pagoda in Myanmar for any number of amazing reasons. First, it sits on a big rock. Second, as you can plainly see, the rock itself is totally gilded in gold and looks like a shot out of a some spectacular nonexistent sci-fi film.

More importantly still, the great rock of the Kyaik-htiyo pagoda is balancing on the precipice of a larger rock. And when I say balancing, I mean really balancing; the area of contact between the two rocks is unbelievably small. So please don't push...

However, barring any natural disasters, the pagoda probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The stone hasn't moved for hundreds of years; perhaps the single hair of Lord Buddha, upon which the pagoda is erected, is somehow keeping this gargantuan rock from slipping away...?

some more pics here and here

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Hendrik Kerstens

The intense portraits of Hendrik Kerstens, in the tradition of Dutch paintings.

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reason to be bookish

click pic :)

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fucking beautiful

Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Fucking Beautiful (Rainbow), 2003, Neon, 168x148x6.5cm

Polymorphous Pervers is the title of a show of Tim Noble and Sue Webster's shadow sculptures and neon'd messages at the Freud Museum, London. According to Freud, young children are, by nature, "polymorphously perverse", which is to say that they can display inchoate sexual tendencies that adults would regard as perverse. This term is the title of a new exhibition by Tim Noble and Sue Webster at the Freud Museum. Appropriately sited in the room of Anna Freud, the founder of child psychoanalysis.

POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSE
curated by James Putnam
The Freud Museum, London
8 November 2006 to 7 January 2007

thanks Carol

Sang-Nam Park

" Plants, visualizing through light" my present project, is based upon my childhood memory. Then we lived in a traditional Korean house where bright sunshine entered throught the sliding papered doors and windows. In my imagination, I could see strange and unfamiliar figures through the shadows. My mother would change the paper before the winter came, putting leaves and flowers behind the translucent paper. As the light changed these strange shapes, some silhouetted, some bold, were etched into my memory to become the thoughts behind my present project "Plants, visualizing through light"
Sang-Nam Park

in situ • Pedro Isztin

Pedro Isztin, born in 1964 to a Colombian mother and a Hungarian father, has lived his life between Latin America, the United States and Canada, his birthplace. His series, "in situ," Latin for "in its place," explores the connection between people and their environments in various regions of the Americas. Isztin portrays nature as the connective force between human souls; the untamed wilderness he depicts in "in situ" highlights both "our individual fragility and our need for social solidarity in order to be truly healthy and sustainable," he says.
Surrounded by lush forests, pristine water and plants bigger than their own forms, Isztin's subjects seem blessed, if not by wealth, than by the bounties provided by their indigenous environments—environments which are impossible to distinguish as South or North American.
read more here

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higher beings sending you a subliminal message

Directors Lounge 07

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Bad art for bad people • EVERYWHERE

J'appelle un Chat une Chatte, Jake and Dinos Chapman, 2001


Happy Famous Artists


Disasters of War IV, Jake and Dinos Chapman, 2001

Coincidence ? Today, when toutes Belgique is awaiting the opening of art can be your xmas tree, featuring our good friends, the happy famous artists, acclaimed for their claim "Bad Art for Bad People" is the first day of an exhibition entitled, guess what, "Bad Art for Bad People" at Tate Liverpool. The Tate show presents Jake and Dinos Chapman, two leading British contemporary artists who came to prominence during the 1990s as part of the generation of so-called YBAs (Young British Artists). The Chapmans' art is characterised by scepticism, parody and irreverence. It combines a vast range of influences, drawn from philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, art history and popular culture.
A description that fits as well for the happy famous artists (a term that fits as well for the Chapmans)

tate via