The following is the final paragraph of Frederic Jameson’s Valences of the Dialectic (2009), re-blogged  from K-Punk.

… We may argue that Utopia is no longer in time just as with the end of voyages of discovery and the exploration of the globe it disappeared from geographical space as such. Utopia as the absolute negation of the fully realized Absolute which our own system has attained cannot now be imagined as lying ahead of us in historical time as an evolutionary or even revolutionary possibility. Indeed, it cannot be imagined at all; and one needs the languages and figurations of physics – the conception of closed worlds and a multiplicity of unconnected yet simultaneous universes – in order to convey what might be the ontology of this now so seemingly empty and abstract idea. Yet it is not to be grasped in this logic of religious transcendence either, as some other world after or before this one, or beyond it. It would be best, perhaps, to think of an alternate world – better to say the alternate world, our alternate world – as one contiguous with ours but without any connection or access to it. Then, from time to time, like a diseased eyeball in which disturbing flashes of light are perceived or like those baroque sunbursts in which rays from another world suddenly break into this one, we are reminded that Utopia exists and that other systems, other spaces, are still possible.

I have been reading this book to try and get a grasp on how Utopia, philosophically out-of-commission in favor of versions of realism and the microtopian¹, is envisioned today, from the specialized realm of philosophical discourse, to popular culture, to the role it plays in the extra-institutional beliefs of regular people.  Jameson argues that Utopia is not only no longer a potential somewhere on Earth, like James Hilton’s Shangri-La, but actually has no possibility as a place in time either.  Utopia is, after all avenues of theorization have been explored, a mystical concept, belonging to one’s dreams, outside the universe (though not in the religious sense of transcending our universe); a kind of parallel thread that ghosts our own.  My 22-year-old’s analogy is that it is, for Jameson, like when you play a time-trial in a racing videogame (Project Gotham, whatever) and get to see the “best time” car doing a ghost run around the circuit.  As brilliant as Jameson’s description is, I fear that when he mentions “the language and figurations of physics” as the required mode of conception for understanding Utopia, he does what seems to have become rather common in contemporary philosophy, which is to vaguely invoke theoretical physics, astronomy, and cosmology, as more lofty fields (which maybe they are).  But, as Stephen Hawking among others have told us, science became wildly complicated in the twentieth century, and the result is that most if not all philosophers (not to mention artists!) have had a very difficult time keeping up, making their invocations flimsy and cargo-cultish.  Surmounting the challenges that extreme complexity in each and every field present to generalist writing and thought will be of importance to the development of human knowledge this century.  Still, Jameson is pointing to a cross-pollination between the philosophic, the mystic, and the rigorously scientific, to great effect.

Here are a few art associations:

LIZ GLYNN – 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project

ANTON VIDOKLE – Night School

BRUCE NAUMAN

CCA SAN FRANCISCO M.A. STUDENTS – Secret of the Ninth Planet

DAVID BOWEN – Growth Rendering Device

RICHARD FEYNMAN’S SECTION AT THE CALTECH BOOKSTORE

FINNBOGI PETURSSON – Tides

SLIM AARONS RELAXING

GABRIEL OROZCO – Horses Running Endlessly

GIANNI MOTTI – Preemptive Act

1. http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/reality_check/ [↩]

In The Conspiracy of Art (2005), a collection of Jean Baudrillard’s analyses on the visual arts, he gives the name “strange attractors” to objects which, without any pretense about their aesthetic value or status as “art”, do a better job nonetheless of fulfilling the ideals of art (Baudrillard’s conception of those ideals, anyway). “Why must the sanction for the sublime and the exceptional always come from art?” he asks in reaction to Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s provocative claim that 9/11 was one of the greatest works of performance art in modern times.

For at least two decades prior, perhaps since the 1984 interview “Game with Vestiges”, Baudrillard had been declaring that every possible artistic form and function had been exhausted, so that what we were left with was a game of rehashing and recombination.  In 1994, long after his theories on the Simulacra had been appropriated by the American art scene and he had been hailed as a visual arts guru, he published The Transparency of Evil, in which he extended his exhaustion argument to the claim that since art had infiltrated every sphere of existence, the ideals of the avant-garde had been realized, a state of “transaesthetics” had come to be, and by virtue of these conditions, art itself as something separate had disappeared.

This argument was further sharpened and pointed toward those who populated the field of interests called the art world in the essay The Conspiracy of Art (1996), which famously stands as the culmination of Baudrillard’s betrayal (or simply rejection, depending on how one views it) of the art world.  Here, Baudrillard talks of how “art” as a designation is held up by the collusive efforts of those who stand to profit from it, including the most earnest artists.  Though Baudrillard’s radical critique on art largely got him ostracized from the art world, and though he was not able to recognize the richness and variety of new frontiers contemporary art has produced since the early 1990s (perhaps because the old can never really cope with the new, and because of the perceived frivolity of the Now), the weight of his claims — which nearly sink the boat — are still slowly, reluctantly, existentially being integrated into the mainstream understanding of contemporary art.¹

What I wanted to do in view of this is begin an image series in which works of art — conceptual, performance, installation, political, new media, participatory, research oriented — are paired, contrasted, and appraised against similar objects and events that emerge from unadorned reality as what Baudrillard might have called “strange attractors”.  Each week we will invite someone to contribute a new pair.

Tehching Hsieh - Cage Piece (1978-79(

V.S.

Stefania Follini, who was involved in a 1989 experiment on circadian rhythms, and voluntarily isolated herself in an underground room fifty feet down a cave in Carlsbad, New Mexico, away from all outside indications of night and day, for 166 days.

Maurizio Montalbini, the sociologist who initiated the project with Follini, lasted in isolation for 366 days in 1993, thinking it had only been 219.

1. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/2008_Kellner_Baudrillard%20and%20the%20Art%20Conspiracy.pdf [↩]

I only just discovered this series, begun in 2007 by UbuWeb, but I think it offers great, albeit inevitably guarded, insight to how these invited authors appraise their own work and ideas.  I particularly enjoyed language poet Craig Dworkin’s submission of a “spam poem”, deemed unpublishable because by the time he got around to it the concept was “old hat” in the language poet community.  I also enjoyed Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s bromance of a collaboration, Hurricane.

http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html

This is a screenshot from the website of The Secret of the Ninth Planet, a show curated last Spring in San Francisco by students at the CCA San Francisco curatorial MA program.

from The Guardian

Vilks (Guardian.co.uk)

24 May 2007, 5:54PM

I think Jonathan Jones is making a slight mistake concerning what is art or not. If Adria is participating as an artist chosen by Documenta he will by definition perform as an artist. It doesn’t mean that he is making good art, it can acutally be bad, but still it will be valued as art. Confirm by one of the strongest institutions in the world.

This way of adding outsiders into the artworld is not unusual. Greenpeace participated some years ago in the Santa Fe biennale and in the last Documenta 11, Okwui Enwezor was showing many documentary filmmakers and photographers.

The usual future for someone entering the artworld in this way is that it does not change anything. Greenpeace did not stop being the environmental movement, it just left the artworld with hardly any traces. So also for most documentary filmmakers. And we can be sure that this will also be the case of Adria. He will make a short visit in the artworld and then he will continue being the master chef in El Bulli. But still we have to admit that he has been confirmed as an artist, though, which I will predict, not as a very good artist. He has too strong an identity within gastronomy and will mainly be recognized as such an item.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2007/may/17/foodcanbeartisticbutitca

This is shamelessly re-blogged from The New York Times:

David Adamo
Born 1979 in Rochester, New York; lives in Berlin, Germany

Richard Aldrich
Born 1975 in Hampton, Virginia; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Michael Asher
Born 1943 in Los Angeles, California; lives in Los Angeles, California

Tauba Auerbach
Born 1981 in San Francisco, California; lives in New York, New York

Nina Berman
Born 1960 in New York, New York; lives in New York, New York

Huma Bhabha
JoshuaBorn 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan; lives in Poughkeepsie, New York

Josh Brand
Born 1980 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Bruce High Quality Foundation
Founded 2001 in Brooklyn, New York

James Casebere
Born 1953 in East Lansing, Michigan; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher

George Condo
Born 1963 in Eindovern, The Netherlands/Born 1965 in Providence, Rhode Island

Dawn Clements
Born 1958 in Woburn, Massachusetts; lives in Brooklyn, New York

George Condo
Born 1957 in Concord, New Hampshire; lives in New York, New York

Sarah Crowner
Born 1974 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Verne Dawson
Born 1961 in Meridianville, Alabama; lives in Saluda, North Carolina, and New York, New York

Julia Fish
Born 1950 in Toledo, Oregon; lives in Chicago, Illinois

Roland Flexner
Born 1944 in Nice, France; lives in New York, New York

Suzan Frecon
Born 1941 in Mexico, Pennsylvania; lives in New York, New York

Maureen Gallace
Born 1960 in Stamford, Connecticut; lives in New York, New York

Theaster Gates
Born 1973 in Chicago, Illinois; lives in Chicago, Illinois

Kate Gilmore
Born 1975 in Washington, DC; lives in New York, New York

Hannah Greely
Born 1979 in Los Angeles, California; lives in Los Angeles, California

Jesse Aron Green
Born 1979 in Boston, Massachusetts; lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles, California

Robert Grosvenor
Born 1937 in New York, New York; lives in Long Island, New York

Sharon Hayes
Born 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland; lives in New York, New York

Thomas Houseago
Born 1972, Leeds, England; lives in Los Angeles, California

Alex Hubbard
Born 1975 in Toledo, Oregon; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Born 1971 in Chicago, Illinois; lives in Portland, Oregon

Jeffrey Inaba
Born 1962 in Los Angeles, California; lives in New York, New York

Martin Kersels
Born 1960 in Los Angeles, California; lives in Los Angeles, California

Jim Lutes
Born 1955 in Fort Lewis, Washington; lives in Chicago, Illinois

Babette Mangolte
Born 1941 in Montmorot (Jura), France; lives in New York, New York

Curtis Mann
Born 1979 in Dayton, Ohio; lives in Chicago, Illinois

Ari Marcopoulos
Born 1957 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; lives in Sonoma, California

Daniel McDonald
Born 1971 in Los Angeles, California; lives in New York, New York

Josephine Meckseper
Born 1964 in Lilienthal, Germany; lives in New York, New York

Rashaad Newsome
Born 1979 in New Orleans, Louisiana; lives in New York, New York

Kelly Nipper
Born 1971 in Edina, Minnesota; lives in Los Angeles, California

Lorraine O’Grady
Born 1934 in Boston, Massachusetts; lives in New York, New York

R. H. Quaytman
Born 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts; lives in New York, New York

Charles Ray
Born 1953 in Chicago, Illinois; lives in Los Angeles, California

Emily Roysdon
Born 1977 in Easton, Maryland; lives in New York, New York, and Stockholm, Sweden

Aki Sasamoto
Born 1980 in Yokohama, Japan; lives in Brooklyn, New York

Aurel Schmidt
Born 1982 in Kamloops, British Columbia; lives in New York, New York

Scott Short
Born 1964 in Marion, Ohio; lives in Chicago, Illinois

Stephanie Sinclair
Born 1973 in Miami, Florida; lives in New York, New York, and Beirut, Lebanon

Ania Soliman
Born 1970 in Warsaw, Poland; lives in Basel, Switzerland, and New York, New York

Storm Tharp
Born 1970 in Ontario, Oregon; lives in Portland, Oregon

Tam Tran
Born 1986 in Hue, Vietnam; lives in Memphis, Tennessee

Kerry Tribe
Born 1973 in Boston, Massachusetts; lives in Los Angeles, California, and Berlin, Germany

Piotr Uklański
Born 1968 in Warsaw, Poland; lives in New York, New York, and Warsaw, Poland

Lesley Vance
Born 1977 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; lives in Los Angeles, California

Mariane Vitale
Born 1973 in New York, New York; lives in New York, New York

Erika Vogt
Born 1973 in East Newark, New Jersey; lives in Los Angeles, California

Pae White
Born 1963 in Pasadena, California; lives in Los Angeles, California

Robert Williams
Born 1943 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, lives in Chatsworth, California

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/arts/design/10whitney_list.html?_r=1

Seeing as we are interested in art as an expanded field which may or may not fairly be said to encompass other forms of production, I wanted to post this photo of Virgin Galactic’s milestone SpaceShipTwo, unveiled this week.  The shuttle represents a milestone in their “quest to develop the World’s first commercial space line providing private sector access to space using an environmentally benign launch system for people, payload and science.”

Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic’s founder, called the ship “a work of art.”  While he likely did not mean this in the sense of art as an expanded field, it seems an interesting angle into the question, which has been asked at Yale University’s online forum What is Art and Why Does It Matter, “Has science far surpassed art, or vice versa?”

Quick one question interview with myself as a curator:

P: Who is your favorite contemporary art duo, working today?

P: Currently, I would have to say Allora & Calzadilla.

P: Thanks.

Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano (2008)

Here is an interview from Art21 on the duo’s chalk piece in Peru.  Calzadilla says something very funny at the end.  “The police … they arrested the sculpture.” I still can’t tell if this was a language quirk or an artistic provocation, but it made me laugh out loud.

Here is a small list of vocab words we came across and looked up — either for the first time or for refreshment — this past month in our art readings.¹

revanchist: (Date – 1926) one who advocates a policy of revanche, a usually political policy designed to recover lost territory or status

tannoy: Tannoy Ltd is an English manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address (PA) systems. The company was founded as Tulsemere Manufacturing Company in London in 1926. The name Tannoy is a syllabic abbreviation of tantalum alloy, which was the material used in a type of electrolytic rectifier developed by the company. The brand had been trademarked by 10 March 1932, on which date the Tulsemere Manufacturing Company was formally registered as Guy R. Fountain Limited.

portacabin:

Now and again you come across the word ‘Portakabin’ in a variety of different, but wrong, spellings. And regularly we are asked questions about this. As the only experts on this topic we would like to clarify the origin of the name and how it should be used correctly.  Portakabin is not an ordinary word but, in fact, a trade mark. Donald Shepherd, the founder of the company Portakabin, had the idea of a stand-alone, relocatable building way back in the Forties. He thought of a fitting name for his business – Portakabin, which he registered as a trade mark. Since that day, only buildings produced by Portakabin can be called a Portakabin building.

As a pioneer in the development of relocatable and modular accommodation and as an international market leader in the industry, sometimes people use our company name wrongly. We always work hard to prevent this.

In short – Portakabin is a protected, exclusive trade mark that can only be used to describe the products of the company Portakabin.

Other mispellings we came across:

portacabin, portacabins, portakabins, porta cabins, porta cabin, portocabin, portocabins, portkabin, porta kabin, porto cabins,potakabin, potacabins, port a cabin, port a cabins, potacabin, porta kabins, portokabin, porto cabin²

secateurs: Chiefly Brit a small pair of shears for pruning, having a pair of pivoted handles, sprung so that they are normally open, and usually a single cutting blade that closes against a flat surface

antiphrasis: The use of a word or phrase in a sense contrary to its normal meaning for ironic or humorous effect, as in a mere babe of 40 years.

cater-corner: (Date – 1838) in a diagonal or oblique position

1. Sources include: Artforum, Frieze, e-flux, Afterall, Artlies, October, OEI, Artvehicle, cms.mit.edu, edge.org, The Next Layer, Mute Mag, aaaarg.org, NeMe, IDC [↩]
2. http://www.portakabin.co.uk/news/newstwo/ [↩]