Fulbright Global Scholar Award in Chile: Day 05 - Income Inequality

http://aqicn.org/map/chile/#@g/-33.1633/-71.4722/10z 

I’m aware of the air pollution today in Valparaiso.

But look, Charlotte has sections that are worse. Is that from traffic?

This local detail reminds me of the Container podcast, Episode 6: And They Won, They Won Big.

Additionally, Chile is and is not the place I visited in the 1990s. I don’t remember watching a young man take garbage from a public trash can and throw it violently to the ground. Or an angry woman with a child yell superlatives. Chile’s economy has gotten stronger, but it’s a complicated picture, according to this 2014 New York Times article from Eduardo Porter.

More about my Fulbright Global Scholar Award to Germany, Chile and Hong Kong
More about the Fulbright Global Scholar Award in general

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 50: IBM and the Port of Rotterdam

My Fulbright proposal outlined my intention to look at the IT systems of ports. Today I’m researching blockchains recently developed by IBM for the Port of Rotterdam. More at http://fortune.com/2017/03/05/maersk-tests-blockchain-based-freight-tracking/

Image from February 24, 2016 article by Eric Piscini, Joe Guastella, Alex Rozman, Tom Nassim at Deloitte titled “Blockchain: Democratized trust: Distributed ledgers and the future of value” https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/tech-trends/2016/blockchain-applications-and-trust-in-a-global-economy.html

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 43: Keller Easterling in Hamburg

Keller Easterling's 2014 book Extrastatecraft. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2163-extrastatecraft

I just found out that Keller Easterling is giving a talk in Hamburg this Sunday, May 28 at 11:00...I think on the MS Stubnitz in Baakenhöft, HafenCity...although online documentation is a little cryptic. More info here: http://www.geheimagentur.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Hydrarchy_final_web_neu.pdf and http://www.iti-germany.de/en/projects/theater-der-welt/program/ and http://www.iti-germany.de/projekte/theater-der-welt/ So excited. Extrastatecraft ideas and projects are outlined here.

And the awkwardness of google translation of the flyer (its own sort of poetry):

Subsequently the Stubnitz becomes the research vessel, the
Cabins are made by thinkers and researchers
occupied. For two days the secret agency discusses
To you and to the Seablindness: What role
Plays the sea in the current social events?
What are the theories of "logistical"
Turn "and the" infrastructural space "for the fight
To the right to port? With Marcus Rediker ("The Many
Headed Hydra ") is about the question of what hydrarchy
Today, with Keller Easterling ("Extrastatecraft")
To the history and future visions of a free port.
The artist and researcher Ranjit Kandalgaonkar from Mumbai
Tells of his research trips along the
External maritime maritime logistics. Constance Hockaday,
Member of the legendary Floating Neutrinos family
Of interventions on the water in battle
The right to city. The dispute about the
Lagoon in Venice and against the cruise ships
We with the artist and activist Marco
Baravalle (Comitato No Grandi Navi). The floating
Platform, Anarche '(Berlin) invites to a debate
The contradictions between political activism, cultural
Interventions and the sheer survival in the
Neo-liberal city.

The symposium will take place in English.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 36: Erin Diebboll

House of Three Brothers / marker on paper - 2016. http://www.erindiebboll.com/projects/7_house_of_three_brothers.html

Thoughts about container artist residency route #4 Erin Diebboll

• All routes listed here: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/routes/
• Her page: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/artists/erin-diebboll/#travelogue
• Artist’s website: http://www.erindiebboll.com/
• Route: SHANGHAI → BUSAN → PANAMA CITY → KINGSTON → SAVANNAH →NORFOLK→ NEW YORK

I love many of Diebboll’s drawings, especially her House of Three Brothers, pictured at the top of this post. Its warping sense of space echoes the resonance of certain objects, walls, corners. My Sherwin Series prints likewise documented the same emotionally warped perception of homes, particularly during times of crisis. Likewise, her decision to cut the paper at unusual angles has the same affect as my wall paintings: it heightens awareness of the gallery architecture in relationship to the depicted domestic space. I also like some moments in her 2010 drawings titled Thirty Years - Basement, posted below, and again, they remind me of the work that I was doing in 2010.

Thirty Years - Basement / pencil on paper - 50 x 96 inches - 2010. http://www.erindiebboll.com/projects/4_basement.html

Her playful drawings of shipped objects remind viewers that many staff on shift or personal at ports do not know the contents of the containers. In fact, only 5 percent of containers shipped to the US are inspected. It also emphasizes art labor—in this case, repetitive, meticulous and for the right soul, meditative—that often goes unnoticed.

Voyage 51E / pencil on paper, metal frames - dimensions variable - 2016. http://www.erindiebboll.com/projects/8_voyage_51E.html

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 35: Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen

Above: Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen. 75 Watt. http://www.cohenvanbalen.com/work/75-watt

Route #3 is by London-based, collaborative couple
Artists’ website: http://www.cohenvanbalen.com/
Container Artist Residency page: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/artists/revital-cohen-tuur-van-balen/#travelogue
Route: HONG KONG → NANSHA → SINGAPORE → PORT KLANG → COLOMBO

I am a bit weary of artists outsourcing their work as conceptual gesture, but their past work 75 Watt (above and linked here) seems so well executed and thoughtfully done. Short on time today (because I cannot delegate my own work!) but will post as today’s notes.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 34: Tyler Coburn

Image: Tyler Coburn. Organic Situation, Koenig & Clinton, New York, 2015. Installation view.

Review of container artist residency route #2 Tyler Coburn

• All routes listed here: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/routes/
• Artist’s website: http://tylercoburn.com/
• Video excerpt from I’m that angel: https://vimeo.com/129042914

I woke up ready to be critical of route #2 artist Tyler Coburn, but instead I find myself obsessed with his line of logic. We have many shared interests, namely logistics, automation, digital labor and extrastatecraft. Many are effectively introduced in his 2012 E-Flux article “Charter Citizen.”

In short, I like the way that he talks about his work in the exhibition "The Promise of Total Automation,” documented in this interview.

I love research-based artworks that reveal compelling, little known histories. In his case, his artwork Sabots highlights the history of a French clog called the sabot and lights out manufacturing. The accompanying piece Waste Management (http://www.tylercoburn.com/waste.html) was also made in a factory, this one in Taiwan, to in part, rejuvenate a little known 18th century literary genre called it-fictions. In Mark Blackwell’s book The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-Century England, the author explains how this genre “languished in critical purgatory.” Perhaps this is why I instinctively quieted my interest  Tom Robbin’s 1995 book Skinny Legs and All with its inanimate objects (Can o' Beans, Dirty Sock, Spoon, Painted Stick and Conch Shell) and happily found those ideas revisited when Jane Bennet’s 2010 Vibrant Matter became popular among art historian friends.

A review of the power of inanimate objects certainly makes senses in any project about global trade. His thoughts on writing for robots also connects to my writing this blog, almost wholly for my own use, knowing that it will likely only be read by a search engine.

Additional reading / watching:

• Some pictures from the exhibition: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/exhibitions/creative-operational-solutions/
• Catalog for container residency:
  http://www.para-site.org.hk/en/exhibitions/creative-operational-solutions
• http://emag.directindustry.com/article-long/big-data-is-watching-your-factory/
• Paul Romer on Charter Cities: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer 

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 33: Mari Bastashevski

Mari Bastashevski. Excerpt Chapter II. 2012-13. http://maribastashevski.com/?/state-business/Chapter-II/ 

I’ve been keeping my eye on the Container Residency (http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/) launched last year, but I’m skeptical of the degree to which the artworks can vary from this one experience. Over this week, I’ll make notes each artist, in order of route listed here: http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/routes/

First up: Mari Bastashevski, http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/artists/mari-bastashevski/#travelogue

Mari Bastashevski departed from Odessa, Ukraine on March 25, 2016 en route to her first stop, the port of Istanbul, Turkey. She will travel to Haifa, Israel; Nhava Sheva, India; Port Klang, Malaysia; Da Chan Bay, China; and Busan, South Korea, before disembarking in Shanghai on May 1st.

Personally, I’m grateful for a picture of her collected readings, pictured on the site, and after some work, I've listed them with links below.

• Frank Radcliffe: A Story of Travel and Adventure in the Forests of Venezuela by Achilles Daunt (https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Radcliffe-Adventure-Forests-Venezuela/dp/B008UARCW6)
• Billy Budd...and Other Tales (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) Hardcover – May, 1988 by Harold Bloom (Author), Herman Melville (Editor), & 1 more (http://a.co/iy6Nlp7)
• Walter Benjamin Illuminations (http://a.co/fwuDii0)
• The Voyaging Stars by David Lewis (http://a.co/6RgaQbm)
• Theory of the Avant Garde by Peter Burger (http://a.co/3mjo8yT)
• Seen Unseen by Martin Kempt (http://a.co/doLMKv3)
• Policing and Prisons in the Middle East by Laleh Khalili (Editor), Jillian Schwedler  (Editor) (http://a.co/b9hqbN3)
• The Archaeology of Islands by Paul Rainbird (http://a.co/83Gpx9o)
• Future War by Christopher Coker (http://a.co/i4PZPc5)
• The Human Snapshot by Editors Thomas Keenan and Tirdad Zolghadr (http://a.co/3lgd2Lx)
• Anywhere or Not at All by Peter Osborne (http://a.co/7EknDVJ)
• The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence by Deborah Cowen (http://a.co/d1WVpTe)
• Conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss by Claude Levi-Strauss and Didier Eribon (http://a.co/1CBjEc0)
• Against the Self-Images of the Age: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre (http://a.co/0Bw75nJ)
• Staging Disorder by Christopher Stewart and Esther Teichmann (http://a.co/aIKHYP1)
• Renee Green: Ongoing Becomings - Retrospective 1989-2009  by Nora M. Alter, Diedrich Diederichsen, Kobena Mercer (http://a.co/h0hPalx)
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (http://a.co/eTGqJS6)

Bastashevski’s photos from onboard the cargo ship seem like typical shots (albeit with fantastic sense of composition and craft) of workers with less agency, but the strength of her past work (http://maribastashevski.com/) rests on her ability to behind closed doors to document people in power. I hope similar strategies were used on her container residency and can be easily viewed later. The residency photos immediately bring to mind Allan Sekula’s Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo-works 1973-1983, recently re-released by UK publisher Mack (http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/1112-Photography-Against-the-Grain-Essays-and-Photo-Works-1973-1983.html) and reviewed here (http://www.americansuburbx.com/2016/11/allan-sekula-against-the-grain-an-interview-with-david-campany.html) through an interview between Sunil Shah (http://www.sunilshah.info/about) and David Campany (http://davidcampany.com/).

Mari Bastashevski. Stack of books for container artist residency. 2016. http://www.containerartistresidency01.org/artists/mari-bastashevski/#travelogue

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 31: Allora & Calzadilla & Irene Small

Allora & Calzadilla, Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), 2015, solar-powered batteries and charger, plywood crate, Dan Flavin’s Puerto Rican light (to Jeanie Blake) 2, 1965. Installation view, El Convento Natural Protected Area, Puerto Rico, 2015–17. Photos: Allora & Calzadilla.

This past February at CAA, my favorite panel was an art history panel title Temporal Frames and Geographic Terrains with stand out talks by Steven Nelson at UCLA and Irene Small at Princeton. During her talk, Irene Small explained the importance of weak links. As an example, she described a collection in Santiago Chile, now the Museum of Solidarity, that was set up just 1971–73 just before the military coup of 1973. The story is more thoroughly told on the Guggenheim’s blog. The blog begins with one such written trace of the museum’s history, a letter from Harald Szeemann, the curator of Documenta 5, from December 8, 1972. On the blog, Isabel García Pérez de Arce starts the blog entry with this excerpt from the related typed letter from Szeeman to John Baldessari:

“Mario Pedrosa, the Brazilian art critic and museum curator, has gone to Chile in order to found there a museum of solidarity between the artists and the experiment of the country, Chile, itself. Some six hundred works of art have already arrived in Chile, among them Mirós, Calders, Vasarelys, and Stellas. Mario Pedrosa has asked me to send his quest to artists of Documenta 5, and the painters and sculptors known to me, in order to help create an activity for this museum of solidarity by means of works of art and the creation of a collection, which alone would justify the construction of a new building. I would be grateful if you could support this project with your thought and your assistance. With best regards, Harald Szeemann.” In the same letter—written on a continuous strip of paper and postmarked California, U.S.A.—Baldessari incorporated the text: “Dear Mario Pedrosa. Please let me know what I can do to aid in the creation of your museum and how I go about it. Sincerely yours, John Baldessari.”

In the current issue of Artforum magazine, Irene Small describes another artwork born of transnational concerns, Allora & Calzadilla’s 2015 installation titled Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), which places Dan Flavin’s 1965 Puerto Rican light (to Jeanie Blake) 2, 1965 in El Convento Natural Protected Area, Puerto Rico with solar-powered lighting. She asks:

But what is a source, what is a site? Flavin’s title was inspired by a remark by Jeanie Blake, a gallery assistant who noted that the sculpture reminded her of “Puerto Rican lights.” Ostensibly, Blake was referring to New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, but the sculpture’s palette of red, pink, and yellow intimates a more amorphous string of associations, ranging from tropical sunsets to piña coladas (invented the same year colored fluorescents appeared, 1963). The parade was itself something of a novelty, a by-product of the dramatic surge in Puerto Rican immigration to New York City in the 1950s and ’60s, spurred by the manufacturing and export initiative Operation Bootstrap. The electrical current that would normally activate the gaseous contents of a fluorescent tube, meanwhile, represents an even more diffuse network, a single point in a vast infrastructure of governmental and corporate relations. The conceptual audacity of Flavin’s light works lies in no small part in gathering this tentacular web and transforming it into an evanescent envelope of space—a glow, heat, and hum—that, quite unlike the invisible network that looms beyond it, can be experienced at bodily scale.

Then she outlines the relationship between the minimalist artwork to the landscape outside the cave, much in the way the factories of New York City and Beacon provide a telling backdrop to the Minimalist and post-Minimalist work of Dia Beacon.

For Allora & Calzadilla, the correlation between art and industrialization becomes explicit—albeit through a process of defamiliarization and displacement. En route from San Juan to Cueva Vientos, one passes abandoned sugar-processing plants and leaking petrochemical complexes, each evidence of the economic asymmetry that continues to structure Puerto Rico’s relation to the mainland. Obsolescence emerges as a historical rather than aesthetic frame, one that admits the deep entanglement of colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization. Once we enter the El Convento cave system, our temporal frame dilates, and we trace the reverse route of the ancient Taíno, ascending through a forest of primeval trees to caves populated by bats and boa constrictors, seeking shade and sun in turn.

Again I come back to this wild flux between abstraction and representation around and within contemporary artworks and the constant digital stream of imagery. As we work on this game about the port and I struggle to present that topic in a way that has yet to be told, I think about how artworks might most effectively represent the larger invisible networks that Small describes.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 30: Containers Podcast

Podcast called Containers. 2017–. https://soundcloud.com/containersfmg 

Quick post today. One of my HFBK students Konouz Saeed drew my attention to a new (as of February 2017) podcast called Containers. One podcast also on the 99% Invisible website.
Good so far.