100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 56: Exhibition Catalog Research

Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective (Writing Architecture) 
by Massimo Scolari et al. The MIT Press. 2015. http://a.co/eGawgmF

As Owen and I oscillate between 2D, 2.5D and 3D spaces in our game experiments, how refreshing to stumble upon Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective by Massimo Scolari, who was a visiting professor at Yale University until 2012...not sure what he's up to now. Today was spent looking up such books for own library and an exhibition catalog review assignment that I will give my students in the fall. List coming soon.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 55: Blender Day

Screenshot of my model from How to Create a City in Blender from Blender Guru

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 54: Lithium in Chile

An aerial view of the brine pools and processing areas of the Soquimich lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat.
Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters.

Research-based art practices are best when they take an unexpected turn. My 3-country Fulbright originally proposed to trace the history of the potassium nitrate trade from the late 19th / early 20th century between Germany and Chile. The profits from this business arrangement helped to build the fortune of shipping magnate Henry B. Sloman and the local landmark the Chilehaus. 100 years later, the extraction of lithium from those same salt beds in the Atacama desert, from which potassium nitrate was mined, is a focus for global trade. More on this soon, but a few links to get me started.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-09/where-your-smartphone-juice-comes-from

http://business.financialpost.com/news/mining/lithium-is-the-latest-hot-metal-commodity-but-investor-fever-could-be-cooling

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/10/the-lithium-mine-fields-of-atacama.html

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 53: Exhibition Catalog Collection

Pictured above: a favorite catalog Experimental Geography by Nato Thompson from 2009. http://a.co/026qmxb 

I spent too much time yesterday and today trying to update my collection of new media art exhibition catalogs in preparation for my fall 2017 class Art and Electronic Media. In that class, the students choose a catalog, write a review of it, and then design their own exhibition. I’ll post the assignment once and list the recommended catalogs once it’s finished. But in the meantime, it seems like fewer venues are producing print exhibition catalogs.

Reader, I offer you this post from 2007 art journalist Marc Spiegler to start thinking about this debate: http://www.artworldsalon.com/blog/2007/03/exhibition-catalogs-time-for-a-serious-rethink/

Onwards…

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 52: Grand Urban Rules

All images from the author's website about the book: http://www.plansandpolitics.com/publications/grand-urban-rules/ 

Another studio production day in Blender, but bookmarking this text as a possible influence.

Lehnerer, Alex. Grand Urban Rules. Rotterdam, Netherlands: nai010 publishers, 2014.

Link: http://a.co/d0nU925
Author’s website on the book: http://www.plansandpolitics.com/publications/grand-urban-rules/

Related links:

The author’s website: http://www.alexlehnerer.com/
His page as Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH ZÜRICH  (currently ranked as 5th best university in the world for the subject of engineering and technology in the QS World University Rankings by Subject): http://www.plansandpolitics.com/

Alex Lehnerer | October 20, 2014 | UIC School of Architecture
UIC School of Architecture
https://youtu.be/2I3U9p5ctCI

German Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2014
Interview with Alex Lehnerer and Savvas Ciriacidis
Questions discussed:
- How is architecture used as a means of communication? How do we productively complicate easy meanings of architecture (i.e. glass equals transparency?)
- How do architects get into a productive relationship with the past?
https://vimeo.com/98869906

Alex Lehnerer - Architecture’s Present Perfect
Lecture date: 2015-03-12
AA School of Architecture
- Insisting on importance of urban planning
https://youtu.be/q7h8ggvwqMc

17 Volcanoes: Presentation by curators Alex Lehnerer and Philip Ursprung
CCAchannel, Talk at CCA's Octagonal gallery, October 6, 2016
Support from National Research Foundation in Singapore
https://youtu.be/jQ0Q7LQ4xTs

City planning with rules as index, spread example 1

City planning with rules as index, spread example 2

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 51: Blender

Small post. Head and heart in Blender...the software program, not a machine that grinds up objects. :)

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 49: 20 Years of N.Paradoxa

This summer, the international feminist art journal n.paradoxa also celebrates 20 years
with a one-day conference.

Quick details:

• Date: 3 July, 2017
• Time: 11-6pm
• Title: Local/Global Dynamics in Feminism and Contemporary Art
• Venue: Grove Building, Hendon Campus, Middlesex University, London

Full details and tickets (£10/£5) :
http://www.onlinestore.mdx.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/faculty-of-arts-and-creative-industries/event/localglobal-dynamics-in-feminism-and-contemporary-art

From Editor Katy Deepwell’s post on the FACES List Serv:

The focus will be on feminist art criticism/women artists but there are
breakout sessions on performance, film and video and sound art.

n.paradoxa published a very early volume in 1998 on ‘Women and New Media’ in
the midst of discussions of cyberfeminism – which included Faith Wilding’s
essay ‘Where is the feminism in cyberfeminism?’, Marina Grzinic’s essay on
her films with Aina Smid; writing by Alla Mitrofanova, Olesya Turkina and
Irina Aktuganova (from the former Cyber-femin Club in St Petersburg);
Susanna Paasonen on the politics of cyberfeminism; Lynn Bell and Carol
Williams interviewing Sara Diamond; Jayne Wark on Kate Craig’s work; Kathy
Kennedy on her work,  and artists’ pages from Vera Frenkel, Gina Czarnecki,
Roshini Kempadoo and Helen Sear, Nina Czegledy wrote about the CD Roms of
Christine Tamblyn and Adriene Jenik, and there is an essay by Angelika
Beckmann on ‘Women Artists at ZKM’.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 48: Faces Gets a Face Lift

This morning I realized that the Faces List-Serv, formed in the 1990s for women in new media, has gotten a face lift, in anticipation of their 20th anniversary celebrations in Berlin, Graz, and hopefully Los Angeles at the next College Art Association conference. More details on all that soon. Note open call for work due June 2017. Anniversary details page still in progress, but familiar archive still firmly intact.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 47: Hydrarchy

This morning, Sunday morning, I attended what I thought would be a talk by Keller Easterling, but due to misinformation provided by an organizer and vague online schedules that gave several dates and no times (and misspelled speaker’s names), I learned at the entrance of the boat-venue that Keller gave her talk the day before, on Saturday.

The up side of this snafu is that I was instead able to attend a fantastic talk by Marcus Rediker, the author of the 2013 book The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.

Awarded the International Labor History Award, this book provides a fascinating history into the early seventeenth century’s launch of the first global economy. Giving special attention to rebellious slaves, sailors and commoners, the book discusses how those disenfranchised seafarers organized themselves into what the authors call a hydrarchy.

The term combines “–archy,” meaning “the rule of,” and hydra-, the famous Greek, multi-headed, sea-snake monster who would grow two heads where one severed. Rediker was pleasantly surprised to find the term’s co-option for various of contemporary resistance.

Typical characteristics of hydrarchy include:
1) Secretive
2) Unexpected
3) Subversive
4) Fugitive
5) In solidarity (workers united in the face of life-threatening environments)
6) With distance from state authority / distrust of authority
7) Egalitarian

He explained that pirates most embodied the term. Like today’s Somali pirates, many of the early pirates were oppressed by authority figures, such as their hometown economy and the captain of the ship. In response to poor working and living conditions, the pirates would take over the ship. And when they’d capture another ship, they’d ask the ship’s crew to join them.

Another favorite term from the talk: terra-centrism or sea-blindness. As noted in pass posts, 90% of contemporary goods travel by sea, but we have always been afraid of the sea, and rightfully so—it still has the power to destroy people who cannot organize themselves enough to build a giant ship. As a case in point, the organizers of the event talked about building ships, hot tubs (?) and other structures to reclaim their “Right to the Sea” (the name of the symposium), but somehow these suggestions left me empty. In light of the refugee crisis, when the idea for this symposium is important and timely, I wish the event could have gained the momentum it needed.

To do so, it would have needed trust—trust in good design, in effective strategy, in open source tech as aid without commercial manipulation, and in the promise for real change. Marcus Rediker ended the Q&A by emphasizing the importance of trust in forming a strong hydrarchy.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 46: Studio, Theory and the MKG

"Introduction of Swedish gymnastics in Hamburg by training inspector Carl Möller - Hang exercises on the new Ribbstol". Johann Hinrich W. Hamann, via MKG Hamburg. Search collection online.

This morning I woke up eager to revisit the writing of Keller Easterling (see her recent E-Flux article and Yale Paprika interview) before attending an adventure on a boat with her and other artist activists to talk about current trends in global trade, but I find myself made grumpy by theory and dense rhetoric. Perhaps I'm just to eager to get in the studio. And time for that is so precious when you are mother and navigating this particular Fulbright.

For today, with the kid, off to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) in hopes of connecting to their 20th century poster collection.  Specifically I need to contact:

Grafische Sammlung und Plakatsammlung

Dr. Jürgen Döring | Leitung | juergen.doering(at)mkg-hamburg.de
Uta Jeschke | Sammlungsverwalterin | uta.jeschke(at)mkg-hamburg.de

or for digital resources:
Projekt Digitale Inventarisierung

Dr. Antje Schmidt | Leitung | antje.schmidt(at)mkg-hamburg.de

http://www.mkg-hamburg.de/de/das-mkg/team.html
Search collection online

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG)

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 45: Access Points

Still trying to make sense of this series of events over the next week here in Hamburg http://www.geheimagentur.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Hydrarchy_final_web_neu.pdf

"Today we suffer from sea blindness," says the head of the
British Navy, and he is right: London, New York,
Hong Kong, Hamburg - everywhere the same picture: the
Ports are mutated into human security zones.

For centuries, life in Hamburg was marked by the
Seafaring. Today there are no sailors
In the city, and Hamburgers no longer drive
at sea. Today, only multinational corporations are in the port
Welcome. Spaces for life and action
On the water are narrow and narrow.
Close to the city, the harbor becomes an event setting, the maritime
Adventure mutates to the all-inclusive cruise, the
Fine dust values.
At the same time, there are activists and artists
All over the world the right to sea new: you build
Rafts of rubbish, try floating the lagoons
Before cruise ships connect
Through precarious sea trade, explore the links between
Migration and modern logistics, and get together,
To save fugitives from distress. On
All seas and also in Hamburg.
Welcome to a right-on-city movement, the
Can swim!
For theater of the world 2017 have become secret agency
And the International Theater Institute,
To access access points from the solid to the liquid
And the right to sea again - with
Performance, symposium and workshops.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 44: More about HFBK 250 Years Celebration

Aula der Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg mit dem restaurierten Wandbild "Die ewige Welle" von Willy von Beckerath (1868-1938). Photo by Tim Albrecht in 2013 after complete renovation.

My highlights:

Symposium
O Superman
11.-12. July 2017
Organization: Michael Diers and Wim Wenders
with Barbara Albert, Laurie Anderson, Monica Bonvicini, Adam Broomberg, Thomas Demand, Helmut Färber, Peter Geimer, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philipp Ruch, Angela Schanelec and Beat Wyss

Symposium Survival
Rate 4% - Current Front Reports from the Kunstakademie
July 14, 2017
Organization: Werner Büttner
with Diedrich Diederichsen, Walter Grasskamp, ​​Annette Tietenberg, Wolfgang Ullrich, Bettina Uppenkamp and others

Conference
The Global Art Academy
July 13, 2017
Meeting of the Presidents of the ASA Partner College
• School of the Fine Arts, Boston
• Universidad del Cine, Buenos Aires
• School of the Art Institute, Chicago
• Hamburg University of the Arts
• China Academy Of Art, Hangzhou
• Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem
• Goldsmiths, University of London, Department of Art
• California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles
• Yale University, New Haven, School of Art
• Bard College, New York
• Purchase College, New York, School of Art + Design
• Kinday University, Osaka, Department of Cultural Design
• École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
• San Francisco Art Institute
• China Academy of Art, Shanghai (Institute of Design)
• Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

HFBK Graduate Exhibition 2017
July 13, 2017
Opening with the award of the Karl H. Ditze Prize
Exhibition 14-16. July 2017

http://www.hfbk-hamburg.de/250years/

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 42: Elisabeth Condon

Elisabeth Condon, Unnatural Life, 2016. Acrylic and ink on linen, 54 x 72 inches.
Courtesy Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida/Phillip Reed.

A colorful post and shout out to friend Elisabeth Condon as I transition from Portugal to Hamburg and back into the studio. A recent article describes the influence of her upbringing in Los Angeles with a landscape similar to Portugal...with "eucalyptus and palm trees, bougainvillea, and ice plant surrounded modernist homes on winding streets" and her mother's way of decorating in Hawaiian Modern style. In the painting above, I hang tight to the visual punch of the black petals outlined in white. And to the parallel lines, like wallpaper, in healthy contrast to her more typical organic material in contrast, which can get kitschy fast (best when it plays the line well). Below, the expanse of pink reminds me of my sketches on yupo. That visual breathing spaces allows her to the pull off the red white and blue, which is most successful in the leaves, lower left, one of which starts to turn, becoming 3-dimensional, next to others that flatten and wrestle with the splatters and stripes. Also critical: that yellow mid-bottom edge.

Elisabeth Condon, Housing Unit, 2016. Watercolour, 22 x 30 inches.
Courtesy Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida/Phillip Reed.

Perhaps this post is part-protest to the German love for bad painting or the gray, windy skies here in Hamburg, siding with the intense greens and flowers in this city's landscape, fed by the rainy weather. Clearly a compelling tension between.

Elisabeth Condon, Love, American Style, 2016. Acrylic on linen, 54 x 72 inches.
Courtesy Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida/Phillip Reed.

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 41: Chilehaus Marketing

Image from the PR page for Kontorhaus, http://www.kontorhausviertel.com/kontorhausviertel-hamburg

I'm giving a tour of the Kontorhaus this Friday. Become increasingly curious about how the marketing around the Chilehaus has always worked. Again see earlier posted poster of Chilehaus. This was based on a photograph of the building (below) was made by Hamburg-based photographer Carl Dransfeld and shaped the notoriety of the building. As Manfred F. Fischer, former head of the Hamburg monument conservation department, wrote: "It was not the Chilean architecture, but the photograph of [it] that had written art history. The invented reality was stronger than reality."

From Manfred F. Fischer: The Chilehaus in Hamburg. Architecture and vision. With 28 picture panels by Klaus Frahm, Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-7861-2299-7.

Chilehaus photo by Carl Dransfeld (1880-1941), taken between 1924 and 1938. 

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 40: Hapag Lloyd Poster

Hapag Lloyd poster in the spirit of the previously posted Chilehaus poster. In the collection at the Peabody Essex Museum. http://www.pem.org/collections/1-maritime_art_and_history

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 39: Weimar Republic

Trying to catch up on historical context for the Chilehaus. https://revisionworld.com/gcse-revision/history/germany-1918-1945/situation-after-world-war-1

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 38: Bernhard Siegert

On vacation at another ocean-lined country Portugal so only a quick note for further research: Bernhard Siegert's recent April 2017 lecture at Princeton titled Architectures of the Ocean. https://soa.princeton.edu/content/lecture-series%3A-bernhard-siegert  I'd also like to see what this produced http://german.princeton.edu/ssms/2016/12/09/challenges-of-media-anthropology-princeton-weimar-summer-school-for-media-studies-2017/

100 Days on a Fulbright: Day 37: Large Drawing Conservation

Ferdinand Ahm Krag. Waves Over Graves. 2011. Mixed Media. 223.3 by 239.6 cm.

Short post (and a break from the container residency) as we're about to travel. As I prep for upcoming exhibitions with large drawings, this seemed helpful and worth sharing: http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/visit-the-conservator/stories-from-the-conservators/fra-rulle-til-vaeg-montering-af-kaempe-papirvaerk/