ART
When Marina Abramovic Dies
Alexandro Segade
05.12.10
Okay so you've just read about Marina Abramovic's ongoing performance at MoMA here on Fanzine from Olena Jennings. Meanwhile, Art Fag City has pondered what she does with all that pee everyday (my bet is Chris Burden is the one changing the catheters nightly, but then that's whimsical thinking); and now we have take 2 on the artist, from the perspective of a fellow performance artist, Alexandro Segade (himself interviewed on Fanzine recently), focussing on a biography about what will be Abramovic's last perfomance.
Rituals of the Body: Marina Abramovic and Yara Arts Group
Olena Jennings
05.08.10
Olena Jennings recently attended two performances, Yara Arts Group's Scythian Stones at La MaMa E.T.C. and Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present, which is still running at New Yok City's MoMA until May 31st. Viewers flocked to Abramovic's show to witness the arduous physicality of her task (and perhaps some to experience a titillating squeeze through a couple of live, naked, statuesque women). Jennings, whose work focuses on Ukrainian tranlations, explains some of the ancient ritual body symbolism in the the two pieces that are culled from various ethnic origins, from Abramovic's native Serbia to Turkey and beyond.
A Real Boy At Last: A Discussion with Artist Oscar B. De Alessi On Youth Culture, Representation, and Suicide
Jesse Hudson
05.02.10
Baudelaire once claimed, "Woman is the opposite of the dandy." Artist O.B. De Alessi begs to differ. By combining figures like Oscar Wilde, Goethe's Werther, Michael Jackson, Hamlet and a cat with the ability to predict death, De Alessi has crafted herself into a highly accomplished dandy with the added modern accoutrements of internet celebrity and suicidal ideations.
Art School: Propositions for the 21st Century
Jesi Khadivi
04.05.10
A plentiful supply of images, music and video are offered by the bandwidth you're using right now and so contemporary art seems increasingly interested in offering something that the internet cannot: experimental settings in which face-to-face community can occur. If the marketplace, the church and the school have been traditional public gathering places, school is certainly the model that has been most readily adapted for art experiments. With an array of contributors, this collection presents rad examples of school-as-art-project as wells as challenges to the underlying assumptions of accredited art schools. While the collection's purview is primarily community projects and MFAs, it seems worth noting that, with state budgets strapped across the country, public school arts education -- like the perenially murdered Kenny of South Park -- is once again on the chopping block.
Self-Erasure: Banksy Hunting in Utah
Rob Tennant
02.25.10
As Salinger's recent death reminded us, a quest for invisibility magnifies a certain type of public fascination. During the lead-up to this year's Sundance Film Festival –– where Exit through the Gift Shop, a film by/about British graffiti artist Banksy was set to premiere –– there were rumors he would unveil his identity, and then works resembling his began to appear around Salt Lake City and adjacent areas. Rob Tennant tells the story with an eye for the role of new media as an archive of ephemeral street art and with the patience to psychoanalyze his hometown. Photos by the author.