Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Duncan Campbell

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Installation shot of "Duncan Campbell" showing screen prints (alt)

The other day I did an interview about this blog with Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes, and he was telling me that he thinks one of the things that makes it great is that it doesn’t feel like we’re plugging something. True, we’re usually just interested in sharing what we’re interested in. But now I’m going to actively promote something. Sorry Tyler! I hope you’ll forgive this transgression, because this is important:

There’s about a month left to see new screen prints and three powerful films by Duncan Campbell—Arbeit (2011), Make It New John (2009), and Bernadette (2008)—which are playing on a timed daily rotation in our Forum Gallery. I think people don’t necessarily expect to sit down and watch a longish (39 min., 50 min., and 37 min., respectively) video when they come to a museum, but this is an opportunity not to be missed. The dinosaurs aren’t going anywhere, so if you live in the Pittsburgh area or will be visiting before July 8, please don’t rush past Forum en route to somewhere else—commit a little time to this show.
 

Miami (in the off-season with Ragnar Kjartansson)

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

I have just begun a month-long research trip that began in Miami, will end in Basel, and in-between will take me to Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Shanghai, Zagreb, Berlin, Kassel, and Paris. And maybe a mining town in Belgium. This trip began in a humid, sultry fashion in Miami, where the CMA’s exhibition, Ragnar Kjartansson: Song, was opening at MoCA North Miami (it goes to ICA Boston in December). I’d never been to Miami outside of December, during Art Basel, and it was nice to see the city as it normally is, without the thousands of art world characters floating around. I had a great few days down there and was reminded of the strong artist community. Thursday evening was Ragnar’s opening—the installation was impeccable. And Ragnar, in true Ragnar fashion, made everybody happy. I had an 8:00 AM flight the next morning, which I miraculously made, and then spent the next 22 hours en-route to Hong Kong. I don’t recommend that to anyone…

David Weiss

Monday, May 21st, 2012

One half of the incredible duo Fischli/Weiss, David Weiss succumbed to cancer this past month. Peter Fischli and David Weiss began collaborating in 1979, and they participated in the 1988 and 2008 Carnegie Internationals. Weiss was present at both exhibition openings, and I’ve heard very fond remembrances from many current and former CMA staff. Look for The Way Things Go (part of the CMA’s collection, and called “one of the most acclaimed art films of the late 20th century,” by the NYT‘s Roberta Smith) to be on view in our “Fountain Gallery” (outside the Scaife restrooms) in the coming month. You can read the Times‘s obituary here.

Road Trip! Buffalo, New York

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

In late March, Dan and Tina and I drove up to Buffalo for the opening of Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s at Albright Knox Gallery. The show was curated by former Carnegie International assistant curator Heather Pesanti, and represents the culmination of three years’ intensive research. We came into the city from the south, and passed through Buffalo’s (post)industrial waterfront on our way to our hotel. I’ve seen a few abandoned steel mills in my day, but found the scale of Buffalo’s grain elevators astounding. Wish made a similar impression later that evening: all three of us were pretty well floored by the sheer scope of the show—which includes not only visual art, performance, and film, but literature and music as well—and the extraordinary roster of artists that have called Buffalo home.

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Jamie Skye Bianco, Haakon Faste, and Justseeds at Apartment Talks

Friday, April 20th, 2012

Apartment Talk #8: Jamie Skye Bianco and Haakon Faste

On March 13, we hosted two very engaged local academics doing interesting work at the intersection of new media, the humanities, and design. Jamie Skye Bianco is an assistant professor in the Composition, Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric group at the University of Pittsburgh, where she specializes in digital media, digital composition and rhetoric, media theory, and contemporary narrative. Jamie talked about her work in digital/tactical media and human affect, and screened some of her video work.

Haakon Faste is a visiting assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at CMU, where his research focuses on virtual experience and interaction design. His recent installations incorporate real-time interaction and immersive environments drawing on novel paradigms such as telepresence robotics, stereoscopic projections, and kinesthetic immersion. Haakon discussed ways in which perceptual robotic art might save the human species from extinction. Minds were blown.

More about Jamie

More about Haakon

Apartment Talk # 9: Mary Tremonte and Shaun Slifer of Justseeds Artist Cooperative

On April 11, Mary Tremonte and Shaun Slifer of the Justseeds Artist Cooperative (a decentralized group of 24 artists with a distribution center in Pittsburgh) presented the group’s portfolios, prinstallations, and interventions in support of causes like Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex, the Occupy movement, labor rights, and fracktivism. I’ve included photos from their collaboration with Iraq War Veterans Against the War called Operation Exposure, in which Coop members teamed up with vets to poster Chicago and raise awareness about the traumatic effects of combat. Also included are a couple images of their recent Voices From Outside exhibition, organized in collaboration with Book ‘Em, a local books-to-prisoners program.

More about Justseeds, including protest poster downloads and prints for sale